


Read All About It

by Mangacat



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Dissociative Identity Disorder, I thought I had a handle on the Avengers I was wrong, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1750736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangacat/pseuds/Mangacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t have the words to say it anymore. History has made you better at actions.<br/>(Or the one where Bucky devises his own PR plan to go and join the Avengers, because Steve can’t be trusted not to hurt himself)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, guys. I got nothing. This started with one scene. One! And of course one more as exposition, but then the Avengers showed up and somehow took over and I don’t even know. And I can't really believe I'm posting a WIP, but while the word count is slowly advancing towards the 10k mark (the fuck) I'm going to need you guys to kick my ass into gear towards finishing it as I break into this brand new fandom. So... let me know what you think?

You stand close to the glass, so close that your breath almost fogs it up, but not quite, because you need to see the moment when the familiar – _strange, distorted, ruptured_ – view of the City changes with the movement of the quinjet that will head for the helipad on the roof of the Tower any minute. Your hand is splayed wide against the window surface, as if that could bring you closer, like tasting the currents of the air. You make sure it’s the right hand this time, after the man in the walls has told you discreetly of the cracks and hairline fractures in the triple shielded, bulletproof glass you left when you didn’t care to think about it last time. It’s not that you really care about property damage or Stark’s bitching about superhumans being super-high-maintenance – a pinnacle of irony if you’ve ever seen one – but you won’t compromise the integrity of any space Steve lives in… stays _safe_ in.

 

You don’t really listen consciously to the status updates even though you asked for them, information stored in those mechanical places they carved out in your brain, muscles tensing and releasing in reaction to something that passes by your conscious mind. The fugue state scares him, when he’s there to witness it, you know, but it’s sometimes the only way you can stay silent and contained instead of lashing out and laying waste to everything that’s around you. And right now, after the news that they’re coming back battered, and bruised and rent apart from the fight, it’s the only thing that keeps you from burning the world around anything that could, _would, has, will_ do him harm. It’s not healthy, they say, this fixation, the absolute focus, exchanging one set of objectives for another that you follow just as single-mindedly. But every time someone brings it up, you just look at them, at those people – each broken in their own way – and ask whether they’d rather you go back to what your mission was before, and suddenly everything else seems more interesting than that particular topic. You know that the ways you’ve been made into a weapon, a tool, are never going to go away, neural networks branded into scars that will never yield back the memories they scorched out. You've made your peace with that, even though he hasn’t, and there’s no resentment left when the little guarded space you have for emotions is filled and crowded with more important things. So you accept that your world is only ever going to revolve about one thing, and why not him, since he’s worth it. Was worth it _before._ And that the price is that you shut yourself off whenever he’s not there, let in the cold voluntarily, because otherwise you’d burn too bright. Burn everything in your path.

 

Your eyes catch the movement fractions of a second before the building tells you they’re here, and you follow the decent of the small jet, resisting the urge to run up to the platform at top speed. You are a soldier, battle-hardened, strong, not a hysterical girl at homecoming. Still, your feet turn towards the upper levels, the commotion of the team scrambling from the jet, and this time… this time something is different. Urgent. Disorderly. There’s Stark, mask drawn, face white, shouting orders into thin air. There’s the sound of footsteps behind you as personnel rush in, purposeful chaos. And then you see a flash of blue, a flash of red. Different red, more red. He’s there, listing, one arm slung over the shoulders of the archer, the other pressed against his side where the fabric of his uniform gapes inches apart - a lot wider than his splayed hand can cover, and your world narrows in a second to that focal point where life is draining out of him, splattered across his pale, pain-cramped fingers. In an instant, you’re analyzing the wound, ripped flesh, flayed skin, your mind running half a dozen scenarios of how you’d cause such an injury, seven different ways of how someone could have fended off such an attack if they’d been covering him in that moment. Watch the rapid fire breaths as they sit him down on a gurney, push him to lie back, hear the agony he tries to keep down behind clenched teeth. But all you can think is how nobody watched his back the way you would have.

 

The subdued mechanical whirr of your fist is fading into background, and the rage in your core goes tight, then cold, palpable. You barely notice the bustling activity suddenly ceasing around you, one of the medics still half bent over him, frozen in your presence. That’s when he turns his head slightly, eyes only half-open but widening to full and round in a second from something he must be seeing on your face.

“Buck, no…”

His voice breaks off unexpectedly when you dart forward, your fingertips feather light on the wrist of the free hand on his side, with a kind of deliberation, tenderness that is so at odds with the violent storm raging in your chest. Touch is something you haven’t allowed yourself in all those months since you’ve come to find him, when you didn’t trust your muscles not to turn against you, wreaking havoc without control. Your heart is suddenly beating hard and fast, throat closing off against the words, but you have to get them out, can’t lose any more precious seconds.

“I want in.”

You look him in the eyes, then lift your head to search the gaze of the others, Stark, the archer, the girl from the Red Room, making sure they get exactly what you mean. When you are satisfied the message got through, you step back and out of the way, thanking the lucky stars that there’s at least one sensible person on Stark’s med staff who doesn’t waste any more time before throwing themselves back into keeping Captain America from bleeding out all over the floor.

 

~*~

 

When the aftermath is more or less dealt with, and everyone is patched up and no longer close to dying anymore, you sit next to him on the bed where he jokes about being able to feel his flesh knitting itself back together, and how it itches maddeningly every time. You know that he secretly just revels in the warmth that spreads from where his elbow is pressed against your thigh, and you let him chatter if he feels like he has to keep your attention away, so you don’t notice and bolt. Words are still difficult, so you can’t tell him that that barrier has fallen, that you know with absolute certainty that you can trust your body to do everything in its power to keep him safe from harm. It’s exhilarating, the knowledge that you’ll be using the weapon for your own purposes from now on, new code writing itself over the trodden paths of _hunt, lock, kill_. You are well aware that there are hoops to jump through before you’ll get to go out into the field with him, but you weren’t built for perfect infiltration for nothing. If it comes down to it, you can fool every single one of them.

 

~*~

 

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t care.”

Stark has been the last one to corner you about the issue, after every one of the other Avengers weighed and measured you in their own way. The mild-mannered doctor with the shadow thrice his size – _I know how it feels to be afraid of turning against your own. Don’t. –_ the dangerous little girl that grew up into her own woman – _a silent moment passing between them with eyes locked. It tells her all she needs to know. She nods. –_ the archer that treads so lightly in the rafters above them, you hadn’t even realized he was there to witness – _if Tasha’s in, I’m in._ – the god whose name sends a shiver down your spine you can’t explain – _you are his shieldbrother, yes? (He extends a hand in a grasp that takes up your arm to the elbow. You don’t move a muscle. Bruises fade.)._ But you take out the words for Stark, because you know, he’s really the one to win.

“I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

That seems to throw him a little, turning from the window with a little clink of the ice in his glass.

“I want you to trust that I will keep him _safe._ ”

There are no maybe’s in your world.

Stark lets you squirm a little more under his gaze, eyes never moving as he takes a calculated sip of 50-year-old scotch. You let your metal fingers catch and release with an audible click to give his ego the appropriate stroke for having rattled you. It’s only a human response after all. Even though you are still a mockery.

 

Stark smirks like he’s got you pinned down and then sets his glass down on the windowsill.

“Alright, I’ve had my publicists draw up a couple of proposals for press releases. You’ll have to review them, of course, to decide how you want come back from the dead.”

The mild surprise from the fact that Stark apparently expected you to pass his test is overridden by what his words imply. You flinch with your whole body this time, and the smirk goes wider still.

“What? You didn’t think you would be swanning in from the shadows whenever Cap needs you to knock off a few bad guys and then vanish again? We’re superheroes, pal, we’re flashy and loud. People are interested in us – there’s even individual fan clubs, if you care to go looking, you probably have one already. And as long as the Avengers are entertaining while doing the world saving thing, we’ll stay on people’s good side, even after the insurance evals for the property damage come in. You’ll be running with a guy who’s entirely decked out in the nation’s primary colors. That covert assassin shit? Not gonna fly.”

 

You make yourself stay utterly still while your thoughts race like lightening in your head, cold sweat suddenly covering your back at the notion of … exposure, a name, a face, a story, out there for all to see and dissect, open, vulnerable. A real person.

You want to run, crawl your way into the walls, wipe the self-satisfied grin off Stark's face with a fist. But then your mind quiets down, battle-ready, the breath before the pull of the trigger, and you understand.

This is the real test.

You asked them to give up part of their safety for you, now they’re asking you to give part of yours for them. You let your weight settle comfortably in your legs, arms behind your back, metal fingers curled tightly around the flesh and blood hand, hiding the tremor.

“I will do whatever is necessary.”

Stark purses his lips for a moment, then he nods and whips out a pair of his ridiculous sunglasses.

“Man, you got it bad.”

He brushes by with one hand clasped on your shoulder for a moment. The casual touch makes you bristle and grit your teeth, but you let it happen anyway, because this is how it’s going to be. When you hear the door snick closed behind Stark, you make a conscious effort to relax your locked up muscles and in a fancy grab the glass he left discarded right next to you. You throw it back, knowing full well the sharp sting of the alcohol will do nothing for you, but the taste calls up a lingering shadow of a burn that once would have clouded your mind and your judgment. Sometimes it’s enough to pretend.

 

~*~

 

Somehow he knows you’ve jumped through all the hoops now when you slip back that night after staring out the glowing skyline for a long time, even though you doubt that the others told him what they were doing. You wonder if he sees it inside you, that small terrified being that cannot handle the thought of being out in the open. You could go back, draw up the ice, present the blank slate to protect yourself from the onslaught of humanity that burrows itself under your skin. You are all of them, a shivering husk of a person, a soldier, a man out of time and more and sometimes the clamoring in your head gets so loud you feel like you can hear nothing on the outside anymore. But then you look at him, and all the voices shout the same thing, and there is clarity in it, even if that makes you co-dependent and a bit insane. He doesn’t mind though, because while everyone orbits about Captain America, you are the only one that orbits around _him._ You are the only one who can, no matter how fragmented and broken you are. He’s a different kind of broken in his own way.

 

“Stark wants me to go public.”

 

His eyebrows slowly climb up his forehead, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s surprise about the suggestion, or the fact that you spoke to him like starting a conversation unprompted is something you do. Words are still difficult, and even if you struggle less with the concept of making decisions for yourself, communicating those still hits roadblocks in your head on a regular basis. It’s another thing you’ve decided to reclaim for yourself, because words were apparently a thing of yours, once.

“Are you going to do it?”

The level tone does nothing to indicate which answer he would like to hear, but you can feel the anxiety thrumming underneath every word.

“Yes.”

He exhales visibly and steps towards you, hands outstretched as if to grasp your elbows, but hovering half an inch short of actual touch.

“Are you sure?”

Anger flashes through you at the notion that he doesn’t trust your determination, but it goes just as fast. He only ever seeks to protect you, albeit in different ways than you want him to. You set your fingers lightly onto the place over his ribcage where the gash is still healing under his shirt and let your head sink down until your forehead lies against his collarbone. He is still but for the calm breaths lifting his chest underneath your touch, having learned by now not to trigger your reflexes when you are this close.

“Yes.”

“Want me to be there?”

You stand there for a moment letting the rhythm of your breathing slip into sync with his, while you try to imagine facing the outside of this bubble without him by your side.

“Always.”

You feel the light touch of fingertips brushing over your back, from your shoulder blade to the dip of your spine and back, setting your body to shiver with something unexpected, unidentified. You saw him move his arm out of the corner of your eyes, so this is not fight or flight. It’s a sensation you cannot remember feeling, but one you _know._

And for one terrifying, fragile moment, you feel whole.

 

~*~

 

It’s surreal, the way you sit here in one of the Tower’s countless board rooms, Stark at the head of the polished table, lounging casually, as if the proceedings don’t really affect him at all. You sit a few chairs down to one side and regret it, because it turns your back on the floor to ceiling window front, which makes the hairs at the nape of your neck stand on end as if the laser dot of a sniper scope already burns at the base of your skull. You know it’s not true, but you barely manage to dampen your instincts in any ordinary situation, let alone something as high stress as this. But when you arrived the wall side of the table was already occupied by a bustling team of PR professionals, and the expensive wood of the table provides much needed space between you and people. From the way everything stilled for a couple of seconds when you opened the door, they need it too. The weight of his fingers on your wrist from where he sits next to you is the only thing keeping you from throwing yourself into the far corner of the room to get a concrete wall at your back between yourself and everything else.

 

At Stark’s subtle nod one of the PR people launches into a presentation of how a new addition to the Avengers is exciting, of course, but since your biography is rather… complicated, it will require careful planning to make sure the public gets to know what they can handle, and what you want known. They push some papers over the sleek surface, different drafts for you to read and decide what you want to go with. You fan them out a bit in front of you and start reading with the cursory, efficient way you’d deal with mission briefs. There is one that proclaims you were found in a chasm in the Alps and made the same miraculous recovery after being frozen solid for decades, for many similar reasons he did and are now merely taking the place you involuntarily vacated seventy years ago. Another one describes you as a Prisoner of War, captured after the train mission and subjected to a range of highly unethical medical experiments that explain your appearance, only to be found and recovered by chance in the wake of the chaos around the S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA takedown. And after several more or less detailed versions of that, there is one that describes the Winter Soldier as an enemy agent, turned, asking for sanctuary and the chance to redeem his actions, no mention of Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes at all.

 

You find your hand trembling slightly as it hovers over that last one and try to sort through all the noise in your head. They are all the truth in their own way and all lies in much the same way. It’s laughably easy to figure out their strategic objectives one after the other, but you can’t seem to latch onto one that doesn’t feel _wrong_ on a fundamental level. The tension you sense rising with every second you stay silent is not helping, and you can feel your muscles locking up in anticipation of a strike. So naturally your brain latches onto something apparently unrelated to the monumental decision of which parts of your life to throw out into the public eye.

“Those are all written in first person.”

For a moment, everyone in the room seems to be as stumped by the words as you are for uttering them. The young woman who had taken the lead earlier blinks once, half opening her mouth, before she seems to remember that she’s a professional and finds her voice again.

“Uhm, yes, that’s because they’re statements for you to read out at a press conference.”

 

A loud cracking sound fills the air and all eyes swivel to where the fingers of your left hand have visibly cracked the edge of the table so that splinters drop onto the carpet at your feet. Heart hammering in your throat, you berate yourself for the miscalculation. Of course it’s not just going to get printed everywhere, they expect you to go out and talk about it yourself. Prove that you are who you are, that you can be what he needs you to be. And you should have known, you should have figured it out before, but you didn’t think past what you are going to be telling to how you will tell it. You hear him draw a sharp breath, ready to speak, and that corner sounds like a very good idea right about now. And if you lose a few seconds to a blackout between your chair crashing into the window, and the unyielding wall hitting your back, that’s better than one of the 47 ways you could kill all the people in the room making it down the wire. You ball your hands to fists and try to get your hyperventilating lungs back under control, but all that happens is your vision starts swimming, and you get the feeling that everything you’ve reached for is slipping away settling like a weight on your chest.

 

He is there in front of you not a minute later; arms open as if to offer an embrace, but keeping his distance all the same. You should feel boxed in, should feel betrayed by the way he obviously puts himself in front of you as a buffer to shield all the fragile human beings in the room as if it’s necessary, (even though it obviously kind of is.) but the only thing you can process is the fact that his bulk hides you from everyone watching as you fall apart. You reach out to wrap your hands around his upper arms, and there will be bruises that you’ll feel guilty about later, no matter that he scoffs at them, but right now you need to hold on to reach a balance between the gut-wrenching panic, and the rage about all the things that come so easily to people, used to come easy to you, that have been taken away from you, locked away behind walls of pain, and cold, and death and indifference.

“Bucky…”

You know he can feel your flinch in reaction to that name, and he’s been careful not use it, because it makes you uncomfortable. Something in the back of your head responds to it, but then you always feel like the image of a man in a cracked mirror, and the pain from all the shards digging out from the inside shows. Still, sometimes it slips out, especially in tense, emotional situations like this and reminds you both that, no matter what you do, you are always going to fall an inch short of the real thing. The unease on your end is not the only reason for his restraint after all.

“This wasn’t a good idea. You’re not ready…”

“NO!”

The vehemence of the exclamation seems to startle the both of you, but you can’t let up now, because if you let him, he will use his worry and concern for your comfort, to talk you out of the whole thing, and comfort is not what you want right now. You need to get past just figuring what you want and into doing something about it as well. You lift your head and look him right in the eyes, another point of contact you’ve shunned a lot up until now, but you are done denying yourself.

“I can do it, I know I can…”, you see Stark lingering at the other end of the room over his shoulder, notice the gaggle of underlings seems to have vanished at some point during the episode, but what you have say is maybe more for Stark’s benefit than anybody else’s. “I just… I need some time. To think about it.”

 

His worry is still palpable, but before he can come up with any argument of why you shouldn’t continue, you straighten your back, press down your fingers much more gently on his arm, with the tentative sensation that still accompanies the concept of touch that is not designed to cause the maximum amount of damage and mayhem. Your breathing is still a little labored but not uncomfortable anymore, now that you’ve actually bought yourself a strategic retreat, a bit of relief.

“Give me a couple of days to process, alright? I didn’t… I’ll figure it out.”

You catch Stark nodding sharply out of the corner of your eyes, before he too ambles out of the room as if nothing of significance happened just now. And Stark’s leaving snaps your attention back to him, and the way he looks at you, which is surprising. His eyes are wide open, lips slightly parted, face slack, and he looks… as if he’s happy and proud. You are bit confused about what you might have done to make him look at you like that, but the shiver traveling down your spine in the wake of that realization is _old, new, terrifying, good,_ and you find that you don’t really care anymore how this meeting went to hell so fast, and just want to stay in this moment for a beat longer.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry guys, when I posted the first chapter, I still THOUGHT I would be done in two installments, but I also thought the Avengers would have cameos in this instead of taking over the whole damn thing and clearly I know nothing. I'm in the process of writing the last third, but I didn't want to keep you from enjoying the next part, so here goes nothing!

You did well to bide your time sorting out this whole mess in your head, but you are under no illusion that it’s a step you can skip by just showing up to the party one day. You thought about that, stowing away when they fire up the quinjet next time the world needs people who are larger than life to save the day, but apart from the fact that that bird is so tiny even you would be hard pressed to find a space to hide in, that wouldn’t actually solve the problem, just transpose it. It’s about trust, about keeping up your end of the bargain, playing by the rules and not least of all breaking through the roadblocks your brain likes to put in your way these days instead of skirting around them. Announcing yourself as part of the team means that you are ready to be out there with them, because you are under no illusion that their wellbeing isn’t intimately tied to his. Watching their backs is a forgone conclusion as part of the job you’ve tasked yourself with. It also means you need a plan of action though, and that’s what you’ve been stuck on for a couple of days already. When even the conscious thought of notepads, and microphones, and cameras and faces, wary and still eager for a scoop, calls for all sorts of the breathing exercises the mild mannered doctor showed you a while back to keep the hyperventilating and the accidental breaking of things to a bare minimum, there is no doubt in your mind that any attempt at the actual thing will end in disaster. However, just when you are beginning to get so frustrated that you can’t even see straight anymore, help comes from the most unexpected of places. 

The simple curve of the Tower’s personalized helipad has become one of your favored retreats. Your spot leaves lots of sightlines wide open and yet it hides you almost completely from view when you sit as you do now, back pressed against the stone surface, legs drawn up to your chest, and arms crossed loosely over your knees. And it gives you the open sky, because as much as you loathe to put yourself into a position that is vulnerable to any kind of attack, the vast open space above makes it very easy to check that you are not locked in a cryo chamber or strapped to a chair in a vault with just one glance if you did happen to lose yourself in your own head. Technically, the penthouse and the balcony are Stark’s floor, but he has never been one to beat around the bush to make his displeasure known, so you don’t think he minds you here, since he hasn’t said anything yet. You let the high winds tug at the loose strands of your hair, while you try to clear your head enough of the usual jumble of thoughts to finally parse the fragments of your life, told, blurred out, remembered into something you feel you can express to the public.  
“So, figure it out yet?”

Before your mind can even finish processing the words, your body has already reacted, fluid movement bringing you to your feet, and the muscles in your arm releasing, with a force and precision that is so instinctual you wouldn’t have been able to abort the motion if you tried. Fifteen feet away, there’s a steel blade buried in the wall, right where the archer’s right eye would have been if he hadn’t leaned three inches to the left with half a second to spare. The man eyes the shining metal with his eyebrows creeping up his forehead and follows the blade’s trajectory back past your outstretched fingers until your eyes meet, muttering: “Impressive.”  
You can barely hear him over the roaring in your ears though, the arm that was steady until a second ago is suddenly trembling, and your legs feel like they won’t hold your weight anymore, when the realization that you just almost killed a member of the Avengers drops ice cold into your stomach. Fear is an emotion you rediscovered earlier than most others, fear of your own defiance, of being adrift, of being hunted, of feeling human or being a prisoner in your own head. The one that runs deepest though – goes deeper every passing day – is doing something that will snap the line, that will make all the patience and forgiveness run out, that will make _him_ realize just who and what you are and finally take action accordingly. What makes this one the greatest though is that it’s not just a possibility like the others – it’s an inevitability. You’ve lived with the knowledge every minute, every day since you came to find him and accepted it, but apparently that didn’t mean you’d be any more prepared for when the moment finally arrived. 

You see the archer put it together just as fast when you stumble back towards the railing, but you are startled into weary confusion when he throws his hands up to show his open palms.  
“Whoa, buddy, not so fast.”  
He grips the handle of the knife and drags it out of the wall with an expert twist of his wrist, but the way the muscles in his arm bunch shows that it takes considerably more effort than he makes it look. You feel your whole body coil like a spring despite the way you’d been trembling just a second ago, unsure of whether you’ll defend against an attack or let him take retribution as he sees fit. But he defies your expectations again by walking towards you slowly, relaxed, flipping the knife in the air and catching the blade easily so he can offer it to you handle first.  
“Hey, now, I shouldn’t have startled you like that. This one’s on me. I know better.”  
You stand across from each other for a beat while he doesn’t move a muscle and keeps his body open and grounded while you digest his words and try to figure out whether he’s serious. He can’t really be, because the number of human people with the physical ability to spontaneously dodge your moves is most definitely tilting towards zero and you wouldn’t have counted him in, if he hadn’t just proven he could. Any other person unprepared for your reaction would have ended stuck to the wall, and they should have known better… 

You narrow your eyes, and your fingers close around the handle of the knife to tuck it away where it came from in seconds flat. The archer would know better, does, seeing as he’s a spy and an assassin himself, all instincts honed to perfection, mind crafted into a tactical weapon used to lay out eventualities and contingencies in seconds. He's not someone who would make any such move without deliberation no matter the real contrition and apology apparent in his words.  
Taking a calculated risk.  
And even though his face stays open and unassuming throughout the exchange, you can suddenly see the ghost of a smirk playing around his mouth. The ball of anxiety in your stomach turns into white hot rage at the notion that he put you through this moment of agony, just for another test, just to play a game, and it’s all you can do to keep your fist from hitting his face to see if he likes it better that way. But before you can fully process, he crosses his arms and speaks up again.  
“It’s good, you know? The way you responded just now?”  
The unexpected turn jars you out, makes you take a step back before he continues.  
“When you’re out there watching his back, you can’t doubt your instincts or your skills, no matter where they’re coming from. You can’t pull your punches.”

You wouldn’t have anyway, it defeats the purpose of reclaiming all that you know and all that you are for a cause you feel is right. But then they wouldn’t know that, until you’re tried and tested in battle, would they? So this is a different kind of assessment. The archer didn’t only want to see for himself what you can do, but also that you won’t be holding back. You are unsure if testing that makes sense though, because holding back is something they’d beaten out of you several decades back.  
Unless… that’s still not the point.  
Through the fog of anxiety, and anger and confusion, you replay the encounter and realize that you reacted to the perceived threat with deadly precision and to the possible consequences with deep, paralyzing emotional distress.  
The first is the action of a highly trained soldier.  
The second that of a broken, fractured psyche.  
… and the decision to check his urge to go forwards into carnage or backwards over the railing and instead work through it with a rational and collected mind.  
That is what a real person does. 

The realization hits you like a punch in the gut, and the archer must be watching it play out on your face, because he smiles with is eyes now, visible crinkles in the corners reflecting satisfied smugness.  
“There you go. Pinocchio is turning into a real boy again.”  
It takes you a moment to parse the reference, but when the implication is clear, you narrow your eyes, and, somehow, the words come out with little pause, and a lot more Brooklyn than you’re used to.  
“I still haven’t decided whether I’d like your face better after it’s been remodeled by my fist, so do kindly take your wit and shove it.”  
Before you can even begin to puzzle out just where you found that comeback, he throws you another curveball by breaking out into a brilliant, delighted smile. You’ve never known a person to react to the tangible threat of bodily harm that way, but then you are currently staying in a tower full of people whose reaction to life is anything but the ordinary.  
“That’s what I’m talking about. So, you want to go shoot something?”  
You blink once, very slowly.  
“What?”  
“You heard me.”  
“You’re serious.”  
“As a heart attack. Come on, what better way to put all that excess adrenaline I’m sure you got pumping right now to use than a good old fashioned training exercise. I bet you haven’t done anything satisfactorily physically exerting in months.”  
He’s right. You’ve been keeping up a regimen, because being cooped up inside, with a head full of shadowy corners you don’t dare go into, is a sure fire recipe for restlessness, but sparring with air is nothing compared to the laser sharp focus of breath, trigger, recoil of firing a weapon. Still, it’s not a good idea, you shouldn’t…  
“Yes.”  
“Yes, you haven’t done that or yes, you want to go shoot something?”  
Before you can second guess yourself again, the answer has left your mouth.  
“Both.”

The archer, Barton, nods and turns to head for the elevator on the other side of the penthouse, obviously confident you will follow him. And since there is nothing more to say, you do.  
The doors of the elevator swish closed almost soundlessly, and Barton announces to the empty air:  
“To the Playground, if you please, JARVIS.”  
Barton throws you a conspiratorial grin as the man in the walls confirms his request in a posh British cadence, but you can’t really concentrate on their exchange much as you grab the railing and press your back against the cold glass. It’s still barely enough to prepare yourself for the lurch in your stomach as you hang weightless for the fraction of a second as the rapid decent begins. You pass floor to floor from one moment to the next. You didn’t arrive in the 21st century the same way he did, after decades frozen in the Arctic ice. They always updated you on mission relevant developments, advanced weaponry, television, cell phones, blanket camera surveillance, GPS,… so you have not experienced the same kind of blank slate. More like a puzzle that slots more and more pieces every time you learn something new (something old), but for some reason, nothing brings the difference between past and future into such stark contrast as the breathtaking movement of an elevator operating with a velocity that once you might have figured could be fast enough to send a man to the moon, if you could imagine such a thing.  
“Are you alright?”  
Barton’s obviously picked up on your unease, even though you try not to express it in your actions.  
“Fine”, you consider leaving it at that, but somehow, the words are less difficult at the moment, and you want to savor it, before it passes. “Just not… overly fond of rapid downward changes of altitude.”  
Barton meets your eyes without judgment.  
“Hmmm, yeah, I guess you wouldn’t be.”  
It’s not a discomfort you can’t work past fairly easily, but it’s also one of the very few things they’d never been able to beat, or shock or wipe out of you. You both cherish and dread it for that reason. 

You are slightly surprised when the elevator passes ground level, and the glass enclosed space is enveloped by concrete, but Barton doesn’t look in any way concerned, so you figure you’re still on track to where you’re going. The display shows you passing several sublevels you know to be garages, until it finally slows, and the doors open to let you into a plain hallway with a single door about twenty feet away. Barton bids you to follow with a flick of his fingers and goes through the motions of fingerprint, retina scan and voice recognition at the security panel next to the door before grinning at you with the familiar anticipatory glint in his eyes as the door opens. The room behind it is lighting up slowly, revealing partitions, and a fully fitted range, simple cardboard targets in the distance. You take it in for a moment before striding in towards the one booth where a couple of nine millimeter semi-automatics are lying, out and ready. You stand there looking at them for a couple of seconds, hesitant, but your fingers reach out to pick them up and start taking them apart almost of their own volition, because you are never going to fire a weapon you haven’t stripped and reassembled yourself first if you can help it. Once you’re satisfied that they’re in extraordinary condition, you put them back together, and the moment the magazine clicks into place, you take stance, aim down the range and pull the trigger until the clip is empty with only a fraction of a second to adjust between center mass and head shots halfway through. When the sound of the last round leaving the barrel fades, you finally suck in a breath and come back to yourself. Your hand doesn’t tremble around the grip of the gun, but you still make the decision to put it down fast, when the familiarity of your actions simultaneously clears and clouds your mind. 

You spread your hands on the dash and lean heavy on your arms, head bent low so your hair falls forward and hides your face as you take deep, calculated breaths. You are not sure what you expected, maybe his face suddenly overlaying the cardboard target – mission parameters accepted – all the names, faces, brutally efficient movement, conditioned inertia, dragging you down. And the memories are there, some blurred and indistinct, some sharp and biting, all of them leaving you raw and aching on the inside, but they are not overwhelming you. Muscle memory and superior reflexes aside, your actions are your own.  
“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m…, I’m… fine.”  
What starts as an imploring mantra turns into the statement of an exhilarating truth when you realize with startled relief that, in fact,…  
“Yes, you are.”  
A kind of undignified, hysterical laughter bubbles in your chest until you feel Barton come up behind you to peer over your shoulder, carefully telegraphing his movement on the edges of your field of vision. Then he whistles appreciatively under his breath.  
“Actually, you are way better than fine.”  
You wonder, for a moment, whether he can see the results on your target, which you know to be there, when it’s so many yards away, but given his particular skillset that shouldn’t really come as a surprise. You allow yourself a small, inward smile at the praise. Exceptional marksman was part your resume long before brainwashed covert assassin was even on the table after all. It doesn’t erase every single terrible thing that put your ledger so far into the red that you can’t breathe thinking about it sometimes. But it also reminds you that you once used those skills for the right reasons, and now you’re free to do it again. You weren’t aware just how important it was to make that issue no longer a hypothetical, even though you are absolutely confident you would have come through in actual combat. 

“So, you wanna go now and take a stab at the Playground?”  
You turn your head towards him, confused.  
“What? I thought…”  
“Oh, you know nothing, my friend.”  
Barton walks over to another discreet panel at the far wall and types in a seven-digit code so that a previously invisible door slides open. You join him in the doorway to take in the hangar sized hall beyond which is filled with an assortment of building mock ups slowly being revealed by the overhead lights that looks like it’s outfitted for nothing short of urban warfare simulations. You turn to look at Barton incredulously and the archer just laughs at your expression.  
“What, you didn’t think Stark would get himself a collection of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes without giving them toys, did you?”  
Barton turns your attention towards a niche at the side that turns out to be a well-stocked armory with a plethora of weapons neatly displayed on racks and laid out on counters. He grabs a cylinder that unfolds into a high-tech bow with a flick of his wrist and a sleek, full quiver, before gesturing at you to take your pick.

“Come on, Tin Man, time to have some fun.”  
You make a point to glare at him icily to convey just how much you don’t appreciate the nickname, no matter how scarily accurate the reference. He just laughs, not at all intimidated.  
“What? Too soon?”  
You haven’t really had the chance to notice since you’ve interacted more with Barton this past half hour then in the past months combined, but he and Stark seem to have a pretty evenly matched sense of humor in a way that is both comfortably cynical and brazenly daring. It’s not that Barton doesn’t express an awareness of all the different ways that goading you like that could make you snap in his every move. But where Stark is brash and abrasive with the goal of getting a rise out of his opponent for the sake of battling his ennui and savoring the adrenaline rush that courting such danger awards, Barton is just supremely comfortable among dangerous, volatile people in a world of ever-changing objectives and alliances, because that is his daily bread. Still, someone refusing to walk on eggshells around you and expressing confidence in your ability (and determination) to act like a sensible human being even in light of all the evidence to the contrary is… difficult to describe. But since it doesn’t feel bad exactly, you decide to take it without worrying too much about it. Sometimes it’s enough to just accept things are working out when they do.

Barton explains the way everything is outfitted with state of the art holographic projectors, so the antagonists have full tactical movement and how JARVIS will run a preprogrammed simulation and will record take downs and tallies even though the projections will simply vanish when they’re hit. He asks how many baddies you’d like to take on and you respond that he should surprise you, which makes him grin. When you have finished putting all your gear together and Barton has initiated the program at the computer terminal next to the armory, you stand at the entrance of the maze, stalling, balancing on the balls of your feet, fingers flexing around the handle of the machine gun you have ready at your side. And you are surprised to find the flicker in the pit of your stomach has a nervous edge. Not concerning the question of whether you’ll be able to rely on your skills and your body’s responses to handle anything the simulation throws at you, but whether you’ll come out on the other side with the ability to turn it off. There is no good reason, and all the reasons that what just happened outside, mere minutes ago, was a fluke and…  
“Off you go.”  
Barton’s tone is full of steely resolve, every sliver of humor gone from his voice. It’s not quite a real order, but it brooks no argument, and you let movement take over your body, sweeping away the indecision.

You cycle through familiar patterns, securing corners and entrances, climbing for higher to be able to case for movement at a greater distance and from a comfortable vantage point. But you get only glimpses, too fast and concealed to actually line up a proper shot, and if the other side has noticed your presence, they haven’t let on by firing at you, which would have revealed their position. After a few minutes of visual cat and mouse, you realize this will not be as easy as making a nest and picking them off one by one. This is going to be down and dirty in a way you don’t prefer, but that is definitely no more of a challenge. You decide to make your way back down to ground level to go looking for trouble. Trouble meets you halfway. 

You turn down a corridor you’ve just checked when a flicker of movement out of the corner of your eyes makes you swing around and… freeze. Only a reflexive backflip through the entryway you just came out of keeps your chest from getting fried – virtually – by some kind of laser weapon. You throw yourself at the wall next to the doorway and breathe deliberately a couple of times to center yourself. Where you expected a soldier in full tactical gear and an automatic weapon, you found a creature of nightmares, taller than human average but slightly crouched, body plated with what looked like bone scales and a mean snarl in completely alien visage. You fight the urge to throw the game right there and go yell at Barton about his ideas of a joke. However, you compose yourself to turn down into the corridor again, shooting to find out that the thing reacts to a headshot like pretty much everything else imaginable would. After it topples and fizzles out into a kind of transparent blue static, you decide you might as well get over the shock of an alien attack and round up the rest of them while you’re at it. In the end, it’s just about stealth, figuring out weak spots in body armor and placing your shots accordingly. Before long, you roll out of the exit on the other side after leaving the last of about two dozen vanishing corpses behind. As it happens, you’ve landed right at Barton’s feet. He’d apparently been waiting for you, and you waste no time rounding on him, poking him in the chest with a metal finger, because you’re feeling petty, and air your exasperation: ”Aliens? Really?”  
He just smirks and shrugs: “Haven’t you heard? It’s a thing nowadays. It was even trending that time we tried our best not to accidentally wreck half of Manhattan. Besides, I figured it might be a good thing to stay low on triggers and not to pit you against a bunch of virtual humans during your first time back in the ring.”

You take a step back, eyes wide and lost for words, as you process the careful and considerate deliberation. Not only did the simulation give a taste of the kind of threats that are really reserved for the Avengers – even though the skies have been blessedly empty of invading extraterrestrial forces since the Battle of New York as far as you know – but the emotional impact of being faced with a completely unexpected and unsettling challenge… looking back now, it kept your head remarkably clear of the fog of the Winter Soldier. There was nothing of the mindless – no, not mindless, that would have been beside the point – of the cold, indifferent pursuit of a set of mission objectives, and more of the unbalancing and kind of exciting prospect of going up against an unknown enemy and testing your skills and adaptability against theirs. Coming alive with the feeling that you are great at what you do, now that you’ve taken back the ability to determine when and why. Still, the kind of vulnerability that comes with acknowledging this was something you needed, that you let yourself be read that way… it doesn’t sit well with you at all, so you choose to scoff a little and quip:  
“Well, I guess if they’re going down when they’re supposed to, that’s all the same to me.”  
Barton just chuckles, eyes crinkling in a way that betrays that he caught the undercurrents just fine.  
“I like the way you’re thinking, my friend. Honestly, it’s amazing, living among people whose lives are so crazy that they’re just not fazed by the weird shit. So what do you say, want to up the ante and make the second go round a race?”  
Barton gestures towards the parkour with the hand still holding his bow.  
“I bet you, I can match your time and beat your score.”

You haven’t seen him in action, but you know that for him to do what he does with bow and arrow as his weapon of choice, he must be good. Really, really good. Still, you know how good _you_ are, and, no matter what, you can’t believe that an arrow will outstrip a bullet, no matter how well placed. And it’s been a long time since you played a game like this just for the fun of it and without the scales of life and death hanging in the balance at the end of it. As far as you remember isn’t even cutting it close. Besides, if there’s one thing you’ve been able to glean from the wreckage of your life, it’s that you don’t back down from a challenge. Instead of an answer you just casually exchange and check the magazines of your guns and just lift your eyebrow as if to ask ‘Well, when do we start?’. Barton just smirks, shouts the initiation code at the computer terminal behind and darts past you into the fray. You don’t lose any time following him back in, and the way your fields of expertise overlap is the similarity of your tactical approach, the way you almost get in the way of each other, acquiring and taking down your targets, shows immediately. But there is a very clear line in the sand indicating who is on what side here, and there is a mutual appreciation for the way one of you regards your opponent picking off a target ahead of the other. And he is good, falling behind a couple of times when you get two targets in your sights at once and use the advantage of firing two weapons simultaneously, but catching up almost instantly every time with an incredibly rapid succession of shots and one memorable instance of double-nocking a couple of arrows to send them into the heads of two different alien creatures trying to get the jump on them from the roofs.

As you work your way through the simulation, you find yourself genuinely surprised that neither one of you manages to establish a clear lead. Which actually makes you enjoy it all the more when you find what you are reasonably sure is the last target in your sights, and you take the shot to wrap this match up in your favor. Instead of hitting the creature dead on, though, the bullet glances off an arrow that was clearly shot to intercept it. The clash knocks the arrow off its ideal trajectory so that it hits the target with barely enough accuracy to make the simulation fade out, but by all accounts your shot went wide, didn’t even graze the target before it ricocheted off the concrete wall to the left, which means that Barton… wins. You stare at the quivering shaft stuck in the wall behind where the last alien stood in startled disbelief. It’s an impossible shot, the amount of information processing, predicting how you would be making your move, the precision of timing between your reaction and the actual firing of your weapon. That is nothing short of…  
“Impressive”, you can’t help it slipping out under your breath.

You watch Barton scale down the side of the building to your right where he had been perched and turn to him as soon as he gets his feet on the ground.  
“You cheated!”  
The tone is equal part awe and outrage, though you weren’t even sure what you were going to say until it slipped out that way. The smug glee that settles over his face makes you briefly entertain thoughts of grievous bodily harm again, but then, you are not that petty.  
“Hey, I said I would beat your score, never claimed I would do it with a perfect one.”  
Your eyes go wide in surprise, because he’s completely right, it’s just what you assumed without bothering think about possible loopholes. Before you can respond anything though, his expression goes from playful to dead serious without warning.  
“You know, sometimes, when you’re faced with something you know you can’t handle by conventional means, you have to bend the rules, carve out your own path, rig the game in your favor.”  
The way he says it tickles something in the back of your head, as if he’s not talking about impossible shots and combat scenarios. And when you turn over his choice of phrasing in your head one more time, it clicks, and the sudden realization punches the breath from your lungs, because everything, from seeking you out on the roof terrace, to guiding you down here and breaking down another door between what makes you a thing and what makes you a man… Everything was set up from the beginning to give you this message. If you can’t deal with all the ways they’ve proposed for you to go public, you’re going to have to make your own. 

Startled, harsh laughter rips from your throat unbidden, because that is exactly what you needed to hear to break through the cycle of frustration you’ve been stuck in since that disastrous PR meeting, but there’s no way you’d have trusted any of them enough to seek that advice or to take it at face value if it had been offered unsolicited and straight up. You regard Barton, who clearly followed the process of your thoughts down to a tee, with a wary kind of respect.  
“Natalia has taught you well.”  
He lets out a short laugh of his own, but behind his eyes something flickers, maybe curiosity, maybe a too deep knowledge of the history that is there, better left untouched.  
“You don’t know the half of it. If that woman ever gets it into her head to go about fixing all of us for real, I predict the world is going to be a very scary place. Come on, let’s go back up and find something to eat. Running around the basement shooting aliens is fun and all, but it always makes me hungry.”  
He clasps a hand on your shoulder to steer you towards the bay doors and back to the elevator, but for once you don’t even have to suppress a flinch at the casual contact. You feel strangely light and settled in your own head despite all that has happened in the short span of an afternoon, and you suspect you’ve somehow done more healing in this brief time than all the time before (though that’s really unfair to all the hard work it took to get yourself to where you could actually experience this in the first place).

Both of you strip and put away your gear in silence, while your mind goes a mile a minute, still trying to process, but when you’re through the range and walking down the corridor towards the elevator doors, you find yourself reaching out to put a hand on his arm, still his movement. Barton stops immediately and turns to you in query, body tense and ready, but unthreatened. Your hand twitches back abruptly. Initiating touch is very rare and reserved for…  
You can feel it catching up with you after all, the window closing, but you need to get this question out, before the words go again, so you take a deep breath and battle through.  
“Why would you do this?”  
He cocks his head slightly: “Do what?”  
You don’t know if he’s genuinely confused or deliberately obtuse, but you try again anyway.  
“Help me… figure it out.”

A shadow passes over his face for a moment, but just as soon it’s gone, and his expression is open again.  
“Well, the way you hear Cap tell it, one of the tricky things about dealing with what happened to you, both of you, arriving in this time, connecting with people, is about shared life experience. And I have an up close and personal knowledge of what it feels like when somebody takes a scrambler to your brain, stuffs something in that doesn’t belong, and then you wake up, and it’s a new world. Trust me, I have better reasons than most.”  
You don’t know the full extent of the story, obviously, but some, and you are certain, without a doubt, that he’s telling the truth. Still, it can’t have been easy to go in with such a wild card and pick at old wounds without being sure it would pay off.  
“Thank you.”  
You barely manage to breathe it loud enough for your own ears, but he’s looking at you in a way that makes you think he still got it. If he did, he doesn’t comment on it; just calls the elevator and ushers you in. On the way up, all you can think about is how you are going to have to sit down now and make a plan. But that’s good, laying out a mission plan is familiar, comfortable.  
Finally, it’s a place to start.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I know! I promised in (unfounded optimism) that this would be the last chapter, but I had to take an unforeseen RL break from writing and the last chapter blew up so much that I didn't think I could keep you waiting so long and then drop a huge wad all at once. So, regard this as chapter 3A? The last part is two thirds written I promise and I'll post it as soon as it's done.  
> Thanks to everyone who's commented, kudo-ed, subscribed or otherwise shown their appreciation for this fic, I know you're out there and you warm my heart!

The elevator stops on one of the communal floors that you normally avoid, but Barton said something about food. Even though your relationship to anything of nutritional value is still tenuous for various reasons, you’ve learned to listen when your body demands replacements for the calories your metabolism burns through, so you follow him in. The doors open into one big room, with a large kitchen area to the left where Stark is sitting on a bar stool at the counter, clearly completely engrossed in something playing on his tablet. Straight ahead, a sprawling set of sofas is grouped around a big entertainment center where Natalia is nestled into a loveseat on her belly with her feet up and her nose in a book, a casual pose that looks off on her, too careless, until you notice the subtle shift of her muscles when you step off the elevator that makes it into artful observation. On the big screen, you just catch the tail end of an ad proclaiming that due to continued popularity and a generous donation enabling them to acquire some new exhibits and commission a replica of the mysteriously vanished uniform (that ended in tattered strips of bloodied canvas on an emergency floor and brought tears to the eyes of the curator when it was finally returned) the Smithsonian will officially extend the Captain America Exhibition for another six months well into the coming year. You follow Barton silently towards the seating area where the man with the broken wings, Wilson, is just turning to his neighbor on the couch, ribbing him mercilessly.

“Hey Cap, I would have thought giving money to people who painted your face ten feet high onto a wall was more Stark’s style.”  
An absent ‘Oi’ sounds from the left, which they ignore. The Captain manages to keep his blush from rising past his ears and deadpans instead:  
“You break it, you buy it, Wilson., Far as I know _that_ hasn’t changed in seventy years, has it?”  
Wilson sputters and boxes his arm good-naturedly. You hang back a little, silent, because ordinarily you have little chance to observe him being this carefree, as he is with the others. When he’s aware of your presence, his focus tends to lie singularly with you. And there’s nothing carefree about him at all. The fact that he can joke about what happened with people who will understand makes you feel lighter, but there is a little bud of something knotted and bitter, gnawing in your stomach. If you had a way to be sure about describing emotions nowadays, you might have called it jealousy.

You are both out of time and need each other as a point of reference in a world that has become so vast and blurred around the edges, but in this moment, you realize that he has started to build a life here, where you are stranded, with people who are a match for him and have in a way become the family he has lost so long ago. You cannot help but need him, because he’s the anchor to everything you are right now, but for him, it’s different. And for the first time since you woke up to the shards of your own existence and made the decision to build your new _old_ life back up around him, you feel like you might want to be part of something, something bigger, for the sake of yourself. That being on the team for real might be more than a stipulation to your self-appointed mission and instead a chance at camaraderie, companionship and you feel a little bit surprised at the realization. It’s not something you expected to ever want again, but the discovery that is might be in your grasp fills you with an excitement you haven’t felt in a long time. It’s not enough to overcome all the looming obstacles that still lie in your way, but it certainly makes them smaller in your mind. 

The two men on the couch are engaged in a childish game of poking each other in various places, until Natalia speaks up without taking her eyes from the page she’s reading.  
“Hello Clint.”  
“Hi Clint, how are y… oh, hey…”  
He barely looked up to greet Barton, but you know the moment he sees you half hidden behind the archer’s back and his eyes widen a little before he schools his expression into friendly calm. He is obviously trying not to let on how much your unexpected presence throws him.  
“Hey guys,” Barton waves and then steps over to Natalia to hook a finger underneath the spine of her book to see what she’s reading. Every other person would have potentially faced lethal consequences, but he just gets a slap on the wrist, so he lets go. You stay where you are, quite at a loss about how to participate anymore in their social gathering and feeling increasingly awkward, while you feel his eyes shift from you to Barton and back, obviously putting together that the two of you entered the room at the same time.  
“So, what have you two been up to then?”

Before either you or Barton can answer, Stark, who has wandered over in the meantime, picks the worst possible moment to jump in with his flippant response.  
“Eeeh, the boys have been down the Playground this afternoon. I have to say, your target accuracy is breath-taking, as advertised. And you shoot like you mean business, I like that.”  
The mystery of what Stark was so engrossed in is solved after all, and even if the notion of having been watched like that makes a bit of cold trickle down your spine, you’re really not at all surprised that he monitored the whole thing. There’s a beat of silence, and suddenly the atmosphere is charged when the Captain’s voice cuts through it with a sharp, almost frantic note.  
“You did WHAT?!”  
The bottom falls out of your stomach at his obvious distress, and you know you shouldn’t have gone no matter how much it turned out to help if this is his reaction. Everybody else – except maybe Natalia, who hasn’t even moved to look up – seems completely startled by the outburst, so they don’t say anything before he continues, scathing words clearly directed at Barton, cutting you out of the conversation entirely.  
“So you what… took him down to the range and gave him _guns_ to shoot at things without so much as a by your leave, because what could possibly GO WRONG?”

“Yo, hold your horses, Cap, nobody died!”  
Stark’s statement clearly does nothing to diffuse the volatile tension in the room. Instead it makes him pause only for a moment before fear-colored rage flickers on in his eyes, and his voice falls to a deceptively low pitch, a sharp and dangerous contrast to the shout that elevated the end of the last sentence.  
“Nobody…? Did you even stop to consider the kind of setback that could have meant? That he could have… If he fell back into…”  
Confusion rattles around in your mind, mingling with cold dread. He had been supportive of your decision to go back into active duty until now, even if he was apprehensive about the publicity issue, but that has more to do with the way it affected you than anything else. You don’t know what’s changed, (except you do know.) and you are not sure if you are going to back down if it turns out he doesn’t want you to fight with him. But you’ve spent so many years being talked about, talked over, like you are not there, and it cuts to the core, that he of all people would do that to you. The knowledge that this is the tipping point you’ve waited for, proof that he doesn’t trust you to come through, to be as whole as you need to be to join the fight, causes a ringing in your head that you try to ignore by twisting your fingers into your thighs, until you feel the bruises form, and the pain grounds you. Loud voices locked in an argument pass you by as unintelligible noise while you try to brace yourself against the blank space in your mind that’s spreading, because every ounce of agency you can muster is spent on your statement.  
“I am right here. And I don’t _want_ to kill ANYONE.”

Everything stills for a moment, and people’s heads turn sharply towards you, making your skin crawl from the sudden attention. You startle yourself for a moment, because until it came out just now, you weren’t aware what a strong truth that sentiment holds for you. That literally the only thing that would ever motivate you to go back out and fight is to protect him. It’s not enough to stop him completely in his tracks though; he is breathing hard, fists balled at his side as if he’s ready to settle this argument with a physical fight; as if he’d actually prefer it that way. Just when he opens his mouth again, Wilson’s voice cuts in abruptly:  
“Cap, I think you need to go take a walk, unless YOU want to be the major setback of the day.”  
Wilson is obviously not at all intimidated by the considerable bulk that is Captain America in a temper, but it’s the harsh words that finally jar him out. He takes a step back, looking stricken, his eyes are flickering rapidly between you and Wilson, widening with every rapid breath, like he’s only now coming back to himself and what he’s been doing. He meets your eyes last, and you see familiar pain and fear mingle in his expression, before he turns on his heel and simply bolts towards the nearest exit. The other occupants of the room follow his retreat speechlessly for a minute until Natalia, who has been the only one conspicuously unaffected by the whole scene, closes her book with an audible thud. She unfolds from the couch with catlike grace and steps around to take both Stark and Barton by the scruff of their necks, before dragging them towards the elevator bay. Wilson lets out a startled ‘Hey!’, but she just throws him a telling look over her shoulder and he deflates.  
“Oh, yeah, I see how it is.”

You really don’t, so you just stay where you are until the two of you are alone. You are completely spent of all the energy that has animated you in the past couple of hours and wait for Wilson to make the next move. The Falcon has been acting as a literal wingman to Captain America throughout most of your time here, so you have seen more of him than almost every other person since you let yourself be taken in by the Avengers, but curiously you’ve never been alone together so far. Wilson studies you for a moment before he sighs and puts his hands on his hips, muttering under his breath: “The pair of you, I swear…”  
Then he seems to come to a decision and waves his hand for you to follow him to the kitchen area to the left. You kind of like Wilson – as much as you are able to parse the concept – for the way he acted like you tearing him out of the sky on the helicarrier was no big deal, (even though it clearly was!) and the amount of support he has given to the Captain trying to wrangle a wayward assassin, but your feet still feel like lead as you follow. 

Everything feels too big for a moment, bits and pieces of your newfound self-confidence crumbling away, like all the ground you’ve gained today is being dragged out from under you again, clearly too good to be true. Wilson only confirms you haven’t moved by glancing over his shoulder for a second before he begins opening cabinets to get cooking ware, rummaging around in the fridge, not paying you any mind until he speaks up again.  
“I figure I’m going to feed you first, before we attempt to sort through this mess with you guys and your metabolism. Believe me, I _know_ what Cap can put away after he’s had an eventful day, and he’s never pretty to deal with on an empty stomach. Eggs and bacon sound good?”  
Wilson obviously doesn’t expect an answer, because he’s already cracking the first eggshell against a bowl before getting the last sentence out and, somehow, watching the completely ordinary and menial task from afar unlocks your ability to move. You walk over, slowly, carefully, but not completely silent, because if anything, Wilson is still a soldier too, and you’ve learned to make such small gestures to put the people around you more at ease. Anti-heartstoppers, Stark calls them. When you reach the counter, you sit down on a barstool across from the one Stark vacated earlier and press your right hand on the counter top next to you to conceal that it’s started shaking. For some reason, the fact that no attention and no expectations are directed at you right now is like someone hit the pause button on all the turmoil in your head. You are thankful that focusing on Wilson’s puttering around helps keep the noise down, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Wilson doesn’t talk while preparing the food, doesn’t seem to have the same problem with silence that the Captain sometimes gets. He has the tendency to start prattling on about everything and nothing, just to fill the space between you with sound. Instead he shuffles the eggs around in the pan, seasoning them liberally with all kinds of spices, which you secretly appreciate, because what little you can actually remember tasting has been nothing but bland. Wilson tips the eggs onto two plates after a few minutes and then turns around to slide one onto the counter right in front of you, before leaning back against the stove, grabs a fork and digs in. You look down at the food with sudden apprehension, stomach cramping, and appetite fading, and even though the sensation of hunger is right there, you are not sure anymore if you can eat anything right this moment. Then the smell of sharp pepper and salty bacon hits your nose, and you have the fork in hand, shoveling a bite into your mouth before you have any more second thoughts about it. 

The first bite might have been difficult, but afterwards it is like the floodgates open, and you devour the food in front of you with a fervor born from an afternoon of physical exertion. It’s also kind of mindless, which helps to keep your thoughts away from the Talk that Wilson is undoubtedly gearing up to. You know you’d both rather avoid it as long as you can and shoveling eggs into your faces is as good an excuse as any. But then your fork is suddenly clinking against the empty plate, chasing around the last small crumbs. Wilson still has a few bits left even though he had served himself a much smaller portion. You would have felt embarrassed about that once, but the food has made you feel full and warm and …  
 _”…everything’s easier with a full stomach, Stevie…”_

You draw a deliberate breath. Sometimes your own voice drifts up in fragmented memories, clear as if you were standing right next to yourself as you uttered the words. It gives you a feeling like double vision in your mind. The voice always fades though, and the feeling recedes until you are firmly in the present again. You keep yourself from shaking your head, still wary of showing such obvious cues concerning your mental and physical state, even to the people you trust not to mean you harm. Wilson must have caught something in your expression anyway, because he just calmly finishes his food. But you know your time is up, when he sets down his plate and draws a deep breath.

“So, what you said, earlier… did you mean that?”  
You don’t look up or answer, the question surprising you in this moment. You expected Wilson to circle around what he’s really going to say (…he doesn’t trust you not to crack, he doesn’t trust you at his back, you should give up on the idea and stand down already…) you were prepared to let him for as long as possible. But you didn’t expect having to contribute to the conversation. When you do look up, Wilson just meets your eyes patiently, clearly waiting for you to speak. So you nod. But feeling the need to clarify one thing, you tag on:  
“I will though, …if that means keeping him safe. And I’m not sorry.”  
It sounds petulant and confrontational even to your own ears, but if Wilson is playing the waiting game, you might as well give him something to work with. However, Wilson surprises you again by nodding in agreement.  
“That’s good.”  
“What?”  
Wilson turns his head to look out of the window into the New York skyline that’s slowly lighting up in the dusk.  
“You know, anyone is capable of doing of difficult, sometimes horrendous things under certain circumstances, for certain reasons. Killing someone is only one of those. Thing is, they might feel it’s necessary in the given situation, but they don’t _want_ to do it. They take no enjoyment from it and they’re not indifferent towards it. That’s not machines, that’s _people_. And the fact that you’ve discovered that line for yourself? Yeah, damn right, that’s a good thing.”

You rub your fingers against the smooth granite of the countertop, trying puzzle out how Wilson labeling your stance as people behavior – which makes a ball of warmth flare in your chest – will figure into the explanation of why you shouldn’t be out fighting with them. With him.  
“You know something else that people do? They see a task ahead of them that seems insurmountable and frightening, but if they feel it’s necessary for the good of others or a greater purpose, they will work past that and do it anyway. And, from what I heard, some of what you decided to do today must have been pretty scary stuff for you. Something that could have ended pretty badly if you didn’t do it right.”  
You study the countertop next to your tense fingers as if it will tell you how Wilson plans to reach the point. Whether or not your excursion with Barton ended right or wrong doesn’t matter anymore.  
“But you worked past those fears and did it anyway. I think that’s great.”

You look up sharply, startled, because that statement still doesn’t fit the parameters of where you expected this conversation to go at all, and from the way Wilson looks at you, he knows that too.  
“Yeah, in fact, I think that was very brave.”  
“But…”, the word slips out between your lips even though the rest of the sentence gets stuck in the back of your throat.  
“But you think Cap was right when he said we shouldn’t be giving you guns, much less let you loose in a real fight. You’re a psychologically unstable, dangerous, brainwashed assassin after all, right?”  
On the one hand, you’re glad that Wilson doesn’t let you fumble until the words come out, but on the other hand, the uncanny way he translates your thoughts makes your hackles rise. Also, the words cut you more than you are willing to acknowledge. Still, you make yourself nod curtly.  
“I thought so. There’s something I want you to think about first: What made you decide you wanted to go out along with the others and fight, even though that meant facing all those obstacles?”

You draw up short, still off balance on how this talk is going and scrambling to put that moment into words.  
“When… when he came back all torn up… I… I couldn’t… the chance of losing him like that…”  
“… got real, didn’t it? It felt real.”  
You drift back into the memory of the jet arriving, the Captain listing between his companions and the feeling that every little piece of yourself you had scraped together at that time was slipping away over torn skin, sinking into drenched fabric with every drop of his blood surfacing. You had spent a lot of your time up to that point tangled between the mindset of an indifferent killer and the wreck of a person slowly rediscovering human emotion, mostly hiding from both behind a protective layer of suspended numbness. But that… that had cut through the haze and dragged you into the present, into action. You nod once more, eyes skittering past Wilson’s face to gauge his reactions without meeting his gaze directly.  
“And you knew before that he was out on missions and fighting and yeah, that might have worried you, made you anxious, but what got the ball rolling was being confronted with the evidence of what he does for a living, even if it was really only the aftermath. That’s when it hit you.”

Wilson quiets as if he’s expecting you to mull it over and figure it out for yourself. This is becoming a theme, really and a very exhausting one at that. On the other hand, you revel in the fact that there’s apparently enough of you there by now that they trust you to be able to follow complex human deliberations like that. You let it sink in, retracing your steps mentally and trying to put together why Wilson would ask you to think about that in the context of … _him_. You have to turn it over in your head a few times until the penny drops. Wilson is implying that the Captain had a similar epiphany to yours, and got upset, because he wants to protect you. But… from what? It doesn’t make sense at all.

You look at Wilson helplessly, trying to convey that you got what he was attempting to give you, but that you don’t understand. He’s been patiently following your process and sighs as if he can’t believe how his life has come down to being the interpreter between barely verbal ex-assassins and temperamental super-soldiers. But in the end, he is about helping people, so you know he will weather this like every other of the manifold crises you’ve had.  
“You know, Cap… he likes it when everybody thinks he’s that unflappable team leader, a bed-rock that others can turn to and build on. And he is, he really is, but sometimes that makes people forget that a lot of scary stuff has happened to him too in the past couple of years. And sometimes he doesn’t deal with that as well as he’d like to believe even for himself. Instead, he compensates by being needed, with his search for a purpose and the urge to protect people. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t make the issues and the need to deal with them go away.”

Wilson pauses for a moment to check in, and you nod slightly to indicate that you’re with him. Even though there is still a lot of you that is scattered, fragmented from a harrowing past, and most of it is likely never coming back, the Captain driven and self-sacrificing to a fault is one of the very few fundamental truths you know. What you hadn’t considered up to now is how his own baggage affects him, and how he might be – no is definitely – neglecting his own peace of mind for the sake of others. It’s a humbling thought and already puts some things in perspective before Wilson continues:  
“So, when you decided to go off on your own, test your skills and your endurance – which is great by the way, making decisions like that – his realized that you are one step closer to being out there, fighting again, and shit got real for him too.”  
You let that settle for a moment.  
“And he… doesn’t want me fighting,… because I could lose control and hurt someone?”  
Wilson shakes his head emphatically.  
“He doesn’t want you fighting, because you’re the one who might get hurt. And after what you did today, how well you did,… that’s not just a hypothetical anymore.”

Your first instinct is to dismiss that train of thought outright, because you are too good and too valuable to let yourself get damaged during an Op, and even if you did, what would it matter? But for once the damned barrier between you and your communication to the world acts in your favor, because it makes you go back over that thought with Wilson’s earlier question in mind and suddenly, things become clear.  
“Oh….”  
Wilson lets you work through it a little more before he nods, apparently satisfied that you arrived at the right conclusion.  
“Yeah… our Captain makes it easy to overlook, but underneath all that extraordinary muscle and stellar attitude, he’s still human. Sometimes, he even gets scared like a normal person. And people who are scared tend to lash out at the first thing that seems to be the problem, even though that’s not actually the problem.”

Funny thing is, you do see it, (relate to it with intimate experience actually.) and even though you feel like you should have known the root of his reaction without a special play by play, there is a bone-deep sense of relief in the realization that it’s not really your actions that made him lose his cool in such a spectacular way. Still, the emotional rollercoaster of the day has just about drained all your capacity for human interaction. At least it seems to end on a hopeful note, which, considering it contains such highlights as almost taking someone’s eye out on reflex, and the only person you’ve counted on to be a calm and unrattled presence in your life blowing up at you, that’s saying something.

You look at Wilson, grudgingly impressed, because he has managed to turn what could have been carnage and mayhem into the manageable kind of mess you’re equipped to deal with by now. It’s something he’s done a lot over these past few months, and you feel like you finally can and need to acknowledge it.  
“How… how did you get so good at this?”  
You wave your hand around with a vague gesture that is supposed to encompass what has become commonly known as ‘superhero wrangling’. Wilson seems startled at first at such a personal and conversational question; then he laughs outright.  
“It’s a gift. You know, I think by now I’m not even sure I’d be able to deal with normally troubled people instead of a bunch of batshit crazy maniacs who've adopted me into their club, so they can have free counselling without having to admit it. Well, except Stark. He _loves_ his shtick with the couch, because he gets to talk about himself for ages without caring if anyone really wants to listen. But otherwise, yeah, don’t worry about it. I know, both you and he need some time, preferably apart from each other, preferably soon, but we’re still making this up as we go along, so… I mean, I’ll talk to him, okay? Get his head screwed on straight again, it’ll be fine.”

You look down at your hands, still a little afraid to trust that sentiment, but you also realize that you are really in no condition to contribute to a positive development there. What you can take away though, is the knowledge that nothing can really keep you from achieving your goals if you set your mind to it, not even him. Anxiety and determination are still battering away at your insides, and it’s a terrifying mix, but now at least, you have somewhere for them to go.  
Wilson catches your eyes and asks: “You gonna be alright now?”  
You look at your splayed hands on the countertop and think about it in earnest. There’s still a lot of turbulence in your head, and you know sleep is not going to an option with how keyed up you are, but that’s fine. You’ve become better about rest, but you don’t exactly need as much of it as people have been suggesting you get. Besides, you have plans to make now, so it’s not like you won’t have something to occupy yourself with. You look back up at Wilson and nod. He lets out an audible breath he must have been holding since he asked and leans back against the counter.  
“That’s good then. Now, let me go find the other half of this dynamic duo, so we can sort this out.”  
He rocks forward and makes to leave for the elevator bay, leaving you to your own devices after an eventful day. You just breathe for a moment, letting the quiet whoosh of displaced air break through the silence, while you gather your wits for the next step.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DID IT!!!!! So, as promised this is the last leg. I thought about breaking it apart just one more time because it's a fricking long-ass chapter, but decided against it, because I finally wanted to keep the chapter tally stable for all the people who've been waiting to read until it's complete. Which it is now, and boy was that a ride. I thank my long-suffering beta candygramme for her hard work and encouragement, all the the remaining mistakes were smuggled back in by me after the fact.  
> I also realize it's kinda dumb to tag this onto the last chapter since I've already full on blundered my way through it all, but I just wanted to say that everything fundamentally to vaguely scientific in this story from medical conditions via the topography of the US capital (although I've actually been there and took that walk) to the customs and practices of the American military is derived from abysmally cursory research, a hefty bit of logical extrapolation and a really good wallop of the good old completely-made-it-up-as-I-went-along mentality of artistic license. I hope those of you who know more forgive the glaring holes and rest assured that I did not mean to deliberately misrepresent anything or anyone.

~*~

You stay sitting after the elevator doors quietly close, fairly sure that nobody is going to stray onto this floor for quite some time and strangely reluctant to go up to the floor where your own rooms are nestled beside his. Instead, you close your eyes and try to quiet your mind to the point where you are able to concentrate on the task at hand. Focusing actually helps dispel some of the tension that’s settled into your muscles. You let everything fall away and try to approach the issue of going public like an op, vowing to keep an open mind about solutions that are out of the ordinary, just like Barton demonstrated. That’s where you realize that before you’re going to get anywhere with this, you’ll have to break down what you actually want to communicate as a primary objective. Stark’s people gave you a lot of options, but they were all about the different ways of processing biographical information. The reason they all felt wrong was that there wasn’t enough depth to them to explain your deeper motivation of wanting to join the Avengers. You need to find a way to let people know who you are and why you are here using the fewest number of words possible. If only you knew how to translate everything into actions and images, since nowadays you are kind of ok with show, but very poor with tell.

The analogy kicks some images loose as it swirls in the back of your head, forming a connection to something you saw earlier. It takes a few moments to percolate, but when it does, a frisson of electricity shoots up your spine. Your mind is suddenly as crystal clear and sharp as you’ve ever felt it. This was always going to be about your relationship with him, your connection, and the way his friendship and example has made you want to try harder, be better, be a better person, now, but also… then. So it’s only natural that he and your mission to protect him should be at the center of your plans. And there is one place close by that is so steeped in your history, past and present, his iconic persona, your sacrifice, that if you can only figure out a way to use it, most of the talking will become obsolete.

Every challenging and harrowing event of the day fades into the background once the idea takes hold, and an excited buzz spreads under your skin. You cast around for something. You aren’t sure what exactly until your eyes land on the tablet Stark left precariously balanced on the side table next to the couch. You settle down on the floor with your back to the couch and spend a few frustrating minutes trying to get it work – you’ve been updated on modern day tech, sure, but these are next generation compound holo projectors – until you concede and reluctantly ask the man in the walls for help. He is only too happy to oblige, but after encoding your user platform with top level encryption and parking your files in a server directory where even Stark won’t think to snoop, you make a very firm point to the AI about the privacy of your dealings, (and you feel like you are detecting a very unsettling note of glee in JARVIS’ voice at the prospect of sneaking behind Stark’s back, even though you’re 100% certain that the AI would notify Stark the minute it determines that your plans are detrimental to anyone’s health and safety.) You start in depth research on inbound and exit routes, transport, time frames, crowd patterns and cell reception, gathering notes on your own personal observations and hacking municipal service systems to get at traffic tracking information. Your idea begins to take shape, and your research actually makes it out as a reasonably straight-forward executable op. 

There are still a few variables you can’t really plan contingencies for – most grievously your own more often than not grossly uncooperative brain – but there isn’t really a plan in the world that covers all eventualities, so this just something you are going to have to accept. The only snag you are stuck on right now is actually how much (or little) to involve the Captain. His presence is unquestionably going to be essential, but the recent events have made you wary of his reaction to your plans, and what would happen if he isn’t 100% on board. Plus, you feel like the less other people know of the complete plan, the more secure you are going to be outside the immediate and very controllable perimeter of the Tower and the easier it is going to be for you to pull the plug at pretty much every stage except the very last step if you realize you still can’t do it. 

You aren’t sure what would be worse, the humiliation you’d feel for yourself or his certainly well-hidden but still palpable disappointment if you try and fail. Or worse… him trying to sabotage your efforts in a misguided attempt to keep you out of the spotlight and the fray. You don’t really believe he would actually do something like that, given how much he’s fought for every little shred of progress ever since he found you alive, regardless of his earlier actions. But once the thought has entered your mind, it burrows its insidious claws in your brain and won’t let go. So you need a diversion, a patsy cause to leave the Tower and get where you need to go, for when you need to get there. On the off chance that something will jump out at you, you browse the calendar again and an upcoming date catches your eye and everything clicks into place. Your hands shake a little when you see it coming together in your mind’s eye. At first you worry a bit that using what is undoubtedly going to be a very emotionally charged event all on its own as a pretext is going to be too much. But the more you think about it, the more it becomes something you actually want to do, closure for one life right before the beginning of what is hopefully going to be another. 

It’s only the slightest displacement of air that alerts you to the presence of another person in the room, and you instantly unclench your muscles, aborting the movement towards the closest weapon, because there is only one person in the Tower with the ability to sneak up on you like that. You blink up at Baron, eyes gritty from staring at the screen for – well if the subtle hue of dawn you only just notice is any indication – the better part of the night.  
“Figured it out yet?”  
You lock down the tablet screen with a casual swipe of your fingers.  
“Getting there.”  
Barton looks at you intently, but you meet his eyes with a blank expression, unwilling to divulge more information if he doesn’t pry. 

Barton smirks at you as if he knows what you are thinking and drops it with tacit agreement.  
“Alright, I think you’ve got a visitor.”  
You lift your head to follow his gaze toward the elevator bay where an imposing figure is half-lingering in the shadows. Your heart beats faster immediately, because you’d be able to pick out that silhouette anywhere, even if you hadn’t known he would be coming eventually. After a moment, you take your eyes off him to glance back at Baron, who hasn’t moved. You frown a little, wondering what he’s waiting for, until you realize that Barton is waiting for you to give the all clear, and you feel your face go slack with startled surprise. That he wouldn’t even let _him_ come forward without your say so takes your breath away for a second. There is no question of which way you are going to go with this, never will be, but to be afforded the consideration of choice makes a fierce, burning warmth bloom in your chest. You nod lightly, trying not to show how this kind of protectiveness affects you, and Barton just inclines his head in return, eyes kind and understanding. Then he turns around and walks back towards the elevator, pausing only briefly to clasp a hand on the Captain’s shoulder before leaving the two of you alone.

You slide the tablet onto the couch cushions next to your head, but don’t get up, choosing to look out into the skyline instead. There is no movement for a couple of tense minutes, but you refuse to let the discomfort get to you. Finally he breaks away from the wall and walks over quietly. You track his advance out of the corner of your eye, but make no move to encourage or dissuade him. He stops next to the couch awkwardly, clearly contemplating his next move, before he slides down to the floor, leaning back against the two-seater that is angled to your right, respectful distance, but close enough to touch if either of you decides to stretch your arms out. The silence isn’t exactly tense, but it’s also not comfortable in the way you are used to with each other. Maybe anticipatory would be the right word. 

“So,… I acted like a grade A jerk this afternoon.”  
You finally turn towards him and simply lift an eyebrow that says ‘ya think’ so clearly, you don’t even have to worry about saying it. He ducks his head a little in response. Knowing that he isn’t going to get off that easy is not helping to get the apology out any smoother.  
“Clint told me how you almost beat him at his own game.”  
You can’t keep from grumbling under your breath that you would have, if Barton hadn’t cheated, and a small smile appears on his face before his features turn earnest again.  
“I just wanted to say, that I… earlier I let my reaction be unfairly determined by my own poorly reflected feelings, but… I want you to know that I’m really proud of you. For facing something when you couldn’t really be sure yourself that it wouldn’t go spectacularly wrong and… for doing so well.”

Your breath catches in your chest at those words, feeling finally the praise for what you accomplished from the one person that matter most. A lightness spreads inside you in the absence of an ache you’d been able to ignore but not shake despite all of the reassurances.  
“I realize that I shouldn’t have let my feelings from that moment goad me into dumping all those insecurities on you, and for that I’m sorry,” he looks down into his lap where he’s got his hands twisted together, before continuing in a very small, timid voice, “but the idea of you being out there, facing what we face… and if something were to… I couldn’t deal with that, not again. And what you’ve been through, I mean, there’s so much… but we made it out and now… you deserve better.”  
It’s all jumbled and you marvel a little at how much he sounds like you, when he’s actually one of the most outspoken and eloquent people you’ve ever known. But it’s heartfelt and you get where he’s coming from, you really do. Still, you can’t let him make that decision for you. 

You don’t think he’s deliberately trying to talk you out of it, but his anguish alone is enough to make you want to reconsider. However, you’d have to deal with the exact same feelings if you agreed to stay out of the fighting and tried to adjust to some kind of civilian life, which is a lost cause anyway. So you try to work past that suffocating weight on your chest, to tell him, make him understand.  
“Steve…”, in any other moment this would be grounds to call up that bright, blinding smile of his, but right now he just snaps his head up to look at you, wide-eyed and stricken.  
“I know you want to, but you can’t protect me from everything that’s happening out there. And certainly not from everything that’s already done and over with. Besides, I don’t _want_ that.”  
You sweep your arm out in a gesture towards the room.  
“Right now, this is a haven and some much needed distance from the world, but I can’t stay cooped up in here forever. And I sure as hell am never going to be able to live some settled, apple pie life. If you want that for me, you might as well put me back on ice and be done with it, since it’s going to be all the same to me.”

Steve lets out a pained noise and opens his mouth, but you slash your hand through the air to cut him off before he can speak.  
“This… this life in the thick of it, in battle, it’s all I’ve known for thrice as long as I’ve known anything else, and all those years, all those horrible, unforgivable things, … they’re never going to go away. But that’s the past now, and if I want to get anywhere near making peace with it, I have to go out there, watch your back, so you can keep making a difference. Use what they made me into against _them_.” What you don’t say is how you were never going to go back anyway, that you’d got that taste for danger and the thrill of the hunt, even before the fall. That he was never going to be able to go back to being normal and neither were you. 

Your pulse is thundering in your ears, and you feel spent, empty, like you used up at least an entire month worth of words on just this one speech. But it just needed out, so, so badly, that it simply burned through the barrier, and you are almost embarrassed to look over at him and see him watch with wonder and a bit of moisture clinging to the corner of his eyes.  
“I… you’re right, I hadn’t… I should have made it clearer, especially to myself that I was going to support you no matter what.”  
He reaches over to where your hand is resting on your thigh, tentative and slow, giving you ample time to draw away if you need to. You don’t; instead you turn over your hand, palm up so you can lace your fingers together. He looks up from your joined hands to meet your eyes.  
“Are we going to be alright?”  
The touch is warm, grounding, and the shiver is back. A slight sting of uncertainty still lingers, which is why you don’t tell him about your plans, not yet anyway. But you nod and squeeze his hand lightly, another human experience gone and ready to be filed away with your growing treasures. He lets out a relieved breath and keeps his hand where it is, letting comfortable silence wash over both of you. You stay sitting on the floor together, watching dawn break as the first rays of the sun filter through the high windows.

~*~

You stand in front of the door, staring at the smooth surface, trying to make your hand move up and knock. You’ve been trying for the past six and a half minutes actually, and you know that for the past three of them, a person has stood waiting on the other side. You want her to open it badly, but she’s not letting you off the hook. It’s not like you have a big problem with doors or announcing your presence in other people’s spaces, even if you’ve only ever been to your own floor and the communal areas in the Tower. It’s what you’ve come here for that’s holding you back, anxiety churning in your belly. The first step.

Finally, after another minute ticks by agonizingly slowly and nothing moves, you berate yourself that if you can’t handle this, you might as well give up and lock yourself into your room forever. You spent seventy years not even knowing what the word ‘Fear’ meant, it’s time you use that for your own gain. You lift your fist and rap it against the door before you can talk yourself out of it again and clicks open barely a second after your knuckles touch the surface, because of course she had her hand on the handle all this time. Natalia gives you a look up through the lashes of her eyes, sly smile playing at the corner of her mouth when she takes a step back, body angled to the side and open – an invitation to come in.

Your heart is pounding, but you step through into the entrance hall without hesitation this time, taking in your surroundings in an automatic sweep. The floor plan is much the same in all the Avengers’ Suites, hers however is partitioned off into smaller sections by half transparent screens and open shelves. The furniture is light colored and clean cut, and the rooms as a whole are sparsely decorated. A single item here or there stands out as _belonging_ to her, but they all together could easily fit in one single box. Her life up to now hasn’t given her much opportunity to collect such things as personal effects, but then, she wouldn’t be good at her job if she let herself be weighed down by unnecessary clutter or mementos. Even the things here, that are clearly cherished, she would probably abandon in a heartbeat if the safety of the Tower was compromised. Still, the rooms feel far from cold or impersonal, they appear to be settled, lived in, suited to her character and familiar in their subtleties. People like you learn how to live with little comfort and private space and make up your own wherever you go. She lets you run your analysis with silent patience, the philosophical contemplation past basic threat assessment just another stall tactic. 

In the end, you turn to her and work yourself up to the point of your visit.  
“I… I need a favor.”  
Before she can respond in any way, you take a deep breath and reach back to tug off the elastic that has kept your hair together, now that it brushes past your shoulders. The loose strands fall forward into your face, washed now, but still kind of straggly and unkempt from not being trimmed properly in what is very likely seventy years. There’ only two people in the world you can imagine letting near with something constitutes a weapon like scissors in such a vulnerable position as to cut your hair and you cannot ask this of Steve. Natalia’s eyes widen in a rare show of surprise when she gets what you came for, but she schools her expression into a pleasant, accommodating half smile in a heartbeat.  
“Of course. Come with me to the bathroom?”

She says it with a completely straight face as if there’s nothing significant about your request at all and leads you to the back of the floor to a large, airy and naturally lighted bathroom all decked out in dark slate and granite stone. You stand awkward, frozen in the middle of the room while she goes to look for something for you to sit on. When she comes back with a three-legged stool, it seats you at a level that is comfortable for her to reach your head, but also just high enough so you can see everything that’s happening in the mirror. Normally, you avoid spending too much time with your own reflection, but right now, you appreciate the thought, because it’s much easier to curb your lethal reflexes if you don’t have to rely on all your other senses to know what she’s doing at all times. Even so, you are surprised to find that you trust her at your back without question. She understands you in a way Steve thankfully never will and often you feel a little less lonely in her presence for it. 

Her hand ruffling through your hair makes you jump with your whole body even though the motion is telegraphed well ahead of the actual touch. She lifts an eyebrow when meeting your eyes in the mirror but doesn’t comment.  
“I’m going to have to wash it first, think you can handle that?”  
You think about it for a moment and then nod sharply. She smiles and beckons you to move forward over the sink. Natalia makes you hold your flesh fingers under the water first to indicate when the temperature is comfortable. Then she gently guides your head under the stream, turning the flow down to a trickle and laying her hand on your forehead to keep the water away from your eyes and nose. Her free hand slowly slides through your hair, and she rubs her fingers in light circles over your scalp. It’s gentle and soothing, chasing away the images that gather in the back of your mind from the feeling of water running over your head. Still, you grip the edge of the sink with just enough force not to crack it and watch the water circle down the drain to make sure it’s not filling up slowly until it’ll cover your face. Natalia has taken up a running commentary while you can’t see her, so no new touch surprises you. You close your eyes and let her voice wash over you. The snick of something plastic makes your shoulders tense up immediately, but the subtle smell of peppermint and rosemary that fills your nose tells you that she just opened the shampoo bottle. It smells like her and you wrap yourself in the scent to calm your fast beating heart.

Once the last suds are rinsed out, Natalia gently lays a hand on your right shoulder to draw you back up. You blink rapidly when a few drops of water run down your forehead and into your eyes. You try to imagine the face of a man emerging from beneath the curtain of your hair, something to be viewed in Technicolor that has only existed in black and white for decades now. You don’t see it.  
You’ve got enough of your memories back by now to believe who you are, who you were, is the truth – theoretically – but often times you still feel like a bad actor playing at your own life.  
“How do you want it?”  
Her question startles you into meeting her eyes in the mirror, while she continues to untangle the wet strands with her fingers and a comb.

“Short.”  
“Like this?”  
She sweeps your hair over your forehead and holds it back into a messy side-part. And suddenly there it is, in a flash, the mirror small and blotched, the upper left corner cracked and your own face as bright and carefree as you haven’t seen it in seventy years, staring back. When Natalia swims back into focus, you shake your head frantically, hoping she can decipher what you are unable to say through the lump in your throat.  
“It’s alright. I’ve got you.”  
She puts her hand on your shoulder and squeezes lightly until your rapid breathing slows.  
“Now, let’s see if we can make something decent out of this. You ready?”  
When you nod, she steps around to the vanity to pull a pair of small, sharp scissors from the drawer.  
You eye them warily but make a point of keeping still. It’s not like those blades are a particularly big threat, even if Natalia is one of a very small number of people with the ability to do you serious harm if she meant to. But you can’t help the scenarios running through your head of just how to break them apart and where to stick them to cause all kinds of fatal damage to a person. The grip you have around your knees to keep your hands motionless is more for her benefit than yours.

The quiet snip of the scissors grates on your nerves, but every strand of hair that floats to the floor is also followed by a feeling of satisfaction. Your hair has grown as long as it did because nobody in charge of your well-being had cared about anything beyond your operational capability for a long time. Now it feels like bits of the Winter Soldier are falling away from you and you are glad to be rid of them despite all the difficulties along the way. It takes less time than you anticipated before the ground around you is littered with hair and your neck is feeling light and exposed. Finally, Natalia rubs something into your hair that seems a lot like pomade and makes the short hair in the front stick up in a way she calls ‘artfully tousled’. When she is done, and cleaned off all the excess strands, she lays her fingers on your jaw to turn your head and give you an appreciative once-over.

“My, aren’t you a handsome one.”  
It’s said playfully, like she’s never seen your face when you’ve got murder in your eyes and it rekindles a long lost flame inside you. You try a flirty smirk on for size and answer:  
“You know, doll, I can’t help the gifts Mother Nature gave me.”  
Her deep and pleasant laugh fills the room and washes over you unexpectedly. It’s been a long time since any woman reacted to you like this, and it goes a long way to make you feel less phony. She strokes her thumb over your cheek, and you can’t help but lean into the touch just a little.  
“You are going to be fine.”  
Her lips stretch into a slow smile, half fond, half wistful, so many things unspoken, but clear all the same. And right now, you want to believe her. Then her expression changes into a mischievous smirk.  
“Now, off you go, give your fella a heart attack.”

You look at her a little apprehensively, because you are not quite sure you understand, but she just chuckles and ushers you out to the front door. When she opens it, Barton is standing on the doorstep, arm raised, ready to knock. His eyes jump between the two of you fast, and after a moment something clicks in your brain, and you feel like you have stepped into something you shouldn’t have witnessed. Maybe given an impression you hadn’t intended. But Barton just whistles through his teeth appreciatively as he looks back at you.  
“Wow, you’re looking, tough guy. When’s the party?”  
You debate whether to treat that as a rhetorical question, but you are about to launch the op anyway and you are certain he’ll have it figured out in no time once he hears of your plans.  
“Eleven days.”  
Your answer seems to throw him for a moment, maybe because he didn’t expect you to be so frank with it, but then he grins.  
“Well, well, I’ll be sure to have the popcorn ready then.”  
You are glad he doesn’t feel the need to pry any further. Natalia snorts and drags him through the open door while gently shoving you out at the same time. You catch them exchanging a glance that is both familiar and mischievous, before the door closes and you are on your own in the hall. 

~*~

You let yourself into the suite, keen ears picking up on Steve puttering around in the kitchen and take a deep breath to steel yourself. He doesn’t look up when you step into the kitchen, though he’s clearly aware of your presence.  
“Hey you, do you want a cup of coffee too?”  
You are too jittery to really think of an answer, but it takes only a few moments of silence for him to finally look up.

You were braced for a reaction, but you still flinch when the mug he was holding slides through his slack fingers and tumbles down. He looks wide-eyed and pale, like he’s seen a ghost, and you guess that’s not that far from the truth after all.  
“Bucky.”  
For once you don’t begrudge him the slip, even if it still makes you uncomfortable. It is, after all, exactly the reaction you were hoping for. It’s only when the hot coffee has spread on the counter and starts dripping on his feet that Steve recovers from his shock. He curses and rights the mug about five seconds too late, before stepping towards you with his hand stretched out, hovering a couple of inches in front of your face, as if he’s not sure whether his touch would meet skin or air.  
“I… when did you..?”  
“I want to go to D.C. For Memorial Day.”

You decide to come right to the point as long as he’s still caught off guard and less likely to ask questions you’d prefer not to answer right now.  
“You…what?”  
“There’s… The Commandos. I want to go, pay my respects.”  
Steve blinks owlishly for a moment until he gets what you are talking about. There’s a memorial dedicated to Captain America and the Howling Commandos tucked away in a secluded corner in Arlington National Cemetery. For Steve, it’s just plaque with a name, really, for you too. But some of the others had decided to have their ashes buried there and it’s been a place for people to visit ever since it’s been unveiled in the late fifties. You aren’t sure if Steve has been – it is a little weird to think about it, since it was first created to commemorate both of your deaths, even though it didn’t quite stick in either case. But it’s the closest site of any personal connection with your old comrades, and visiting will give you the perfect opportunity to go where you need to be, when you want to go, without outright revealing your true intentions.  
“Can you… Stark,… he can make it safe? Private? Right?”

You take his hand, well aware that the move is somewhat manipulative, but you need him to get on board with the idea without thinking too much about it.  
“You… are you sure? Where is this coming from?”  
“I have to get out of this tower at some point. Might as well be for a good reason, right?”  
“But,… there’ll be…”  
“People? I’m aware. Also something I have to face eventually. I spent months in the city without killing anybody, remember? Besides, you don’t think Tony Stark asking on behalf of Captain America can’t get the area cleared out for half an hour and drop us off right in front of it, do you?”  
Steve looks stunned, but not like he’s about to protest adamantly. More like he’s thrown that you’re putting together solid arguments and fielding questions like you don’t have trouble stringing a coherent sentence together half of the time. Predictably though, he chooses to focus on something else entirely.  
“Us… you mean?”  
“Don’t be stupid, like I was going to do something so important without you!”  
It’s baffling sometimes, how insecure he can be about his place in your life. You’ve slowly reached out, made connections with the other Avengers, true, but you wouldn’t be anywhere, be anyone, without him.

“You’ve really thought this through, huh?”  
You squeeze lightly with your right hand, and his attention is immediately drawn to your fingers around his wrist.  
“I have.”  
He looks back up and seems to find something in your eyes that brooks not further argument.  
“Is that the reason for...?”  
He nods towards your hair. You just shrug lightly.  
“I needed to lose some baggage.”  
His eyes are kind and understanding when you meet them, but there’s also a different light in them, as if you did something unexpected and pleasing.  
“I…”, he looks back at the mess on the kitchen counter. “Let me clean this up and then we’ll call Tony, alright?”  
You let go of a breath you can’t remember having held until the air is leaving your lungs.  
Now the ball is finally rolling.

~*~

Stark meets the request with a categorical ‘No’, citing a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the wreckage they left in their wake the last time they were in the city together – ‘we only get a pass for making people remodel the better part of downtown anywhere once a decade, and we’re already in the red, Rogers’ – but once Steve has latched onto the idea, he becomes its staunchest defender to the point where you don’t even have to do anything more. Besides, the Avengers might have an abysmal track record about the leveling of city blocks, but it’s not like they set out to fight all those crazy super-villains in the most densely populated areas of the country on purpose.  
“It’s not like anybody is going to know we’re even there. One car, a driver and we’ll go in as civilians, in and out in a pinch.”  
Stark looks unconvinced, even though Steve’s soulful and honest gaze is clearly chipping away at his defenses. Still, you feel like just a little bit of a push is needed and decide to turn his own arguments against him.  
“You are the one who said I needed to get out in front of people. You can’t ask that of me and then tell me I can’t go and leave the tower for a private visit completely under the radar.”

Stark’s eyebrows lift with his unique brand of annoyed incredulity when he picks up the truth in your words and he looks like he doesn’t know if he wants to shake you or kiss you for your fit of rhetorical brilliance. Finally, his eyes jump between you and Steve and he throws his hands up with a muttered ‘fucking meddling nonagenarians, I swear’.  
“Alright, I’ll call the mayor about cordoning off a part of our biggest National Cemetery _on Memorial Day_. You’re lucky he likes me since I stuck it to the Senate Committee about the suit a couple of years ago. Those politicians, always the first to appreciate when somebody else takes a nose dive. But seriously, no funny business or I WILL ground you like teenagers, and I don’t care that you’re technically old enough to be my grandfathers. Your shenanigans dismantling S.H.I.E.L.D. alone generated enough business to occupy my entire legal department for the next three years.”

He points his finger at Steve, who ducks his head with a blush you suspect has more to do with his embarrassment about leaning on his status for preferential treatment, – which he despises, but will use for your benefit in a heartbeat every single time – because his eyes are flint-hard and you know enough to recognize that look as decidedly-not-sorry. Interestingly enough, he also doesn’t comment on Stark’s threat about funny business with neither affirmative, nor decline, clearly unwilling to let himself be pinned down on what he can and cannot do, even by his friends. You wonder, all of the sudden, how people so often seem to underestimate Captain America, dazzled by his veneer of wholesome, righteous propriety, no doubt. 

But once you bother to scratch the surface, underneath there is a battle-hardened survivor, a brilliant strategist, a decisive leader with the strength to hold together the most volatile and autonomous group of people and the iron will to stand up for what he believes in against the insurmountable force of the system, with an acceptance for the inevitable loss that position entails. And just for a moment in this odd bout of introspection that feels way more loaded than the actual conversation warrants, you get a glimpse of that uncompromising ruthlessness that comes with the ability to make the people around him follow his lead even if it’s against their better judgment, to get them to do what he feels is needed. The realization that what the world sees is a far cry from all that Steve Rogers is somehow makes you feel closer to him than you have experienced since you regained your awareness as a person even if his front is much different than yours. You catch yourself leaning forward as if reeled in by some kind of magnetic attraction to…  
…to do what, exactly?

Steve hits you with a brilliant, accomplished smile and you feel caught out and on the spot, painfully aware how Stark is watching the two of you out of the corner of his eyes even though he seems fully occupied with his phone call, pacing slowly by the window. You deliberately straighten your back to put some distance between you and Steve and loathe to see his smile dim as you try to sort out the tangle of feelings and confusion in your head, but at least it doesn’t disappear completely. You reach for him in a placating gesture, and he grabs your hand without hesitation, though he still searches your face for cues as to what is going on. Clearly the fact that he can’t read everything just from looking at your face is hurting him, because that used to be the easiest thing he did. But how could he if you can’t even tell yourself what is on your mind? You avert your eyes but keep your hand where it is to assure him that you are not shutting him out. Both of you just have to accept that, with all the progress that’s happened lately, there are also going to be times that remind you things are not never going to back to what they used to be. You’ll have to find your own way, a new way, but by now, you are tentatively hopeful that in time, the answers will come. 

~*~

Stark might have been brought on board with the plan kicking and screaming, but once he starts throwing his weight around for real, things start moving pretty much immediately. Still, even with all that it takes the better part of the week to finalize all the arrangements, until everyone is mostly satisfied with the itinerary and the personnel situation. Natalia emphatically throws her lot in with keeping it a down low operation, arguing that to avoid drawing attention by forgoing a big entourage is their best defense. Besides, it’s not like any of them don’t know how to handle themselves in a fight. It is agreed that Tony will decide on a spontaneous outing that morning, making a great exit to regale the press with his planned pursuits for the day, so that their single car can slip out unobtrusively amongst the distraction.

Despite all the preparation and careful planning, it still takes you kind of by surprise one evening, that tomorrow is going to be the day, and you’ll be leaving for D.C. in the morning. You find yourself tossing and turning, then cramped into the far corner of your room, jittery with nerves and unable to sleep. It’s not something completely unheard of, of course. You’ve spent plenty of sleepless nights since you stopped being frozen for the better part of your time, but the anxiety you feel right now has an unusual quality. It’s almost as if there’s excitement mixed in with all the anticipation, and the terror of your own body and mind conspiring in some way to make all your efforts be for naught in the end. The notion of actually looking forward to the monumental task you set yourself is, frankly, mind-boggling and kind of positive, but you’re going to need all your wits about you come morning, and that means getting as much rest as you can possibly manage. 

So, at three in the morning, you finally give up and slip down the hall on silent feet, entering Steve’s bedroom without a sound and walking over slowly to where he is lying on his side. You slide to your knees, resting your forearms on the edge of the mattress and prop your chin on the back of your hand so your eyes are almost level with his bare chest slowly rising and falling under the thin sheet. It’s not an entirely uncommon occurrence, watching him sleep, the regular, uninterrupted rhythm of his breath sometimes the only way you can achieve any measure of calm. You did it a lot, at first, driven by the need to figure out that man that was so adamant about dragging a real person out from underneath the wrecked remnants of the Winter Soldier, completely baffled by the reckless trust, since he rarely seems to wake up when you were there, as if he was so used to your eyes on him in his sleep (and that one became kind of blindingly obvious over time). Later again when he came home shredded to bits and the need turned into making sure that he didn’t stop somewhere between one breath and the next, the feeling echoing through time like a twisted déjà vu.

Tonight is different though, probably because he’s dealing with his tension concerning the coming day, no matter how cheerful a front he put up during the preparations. So it’s only a few minutes that pass by before his eyes start moving left and right under his lids and then slip open to half-mast to meet yours.  
“Hmm… Buck… you alright?”  
It’s sleepy and soft, unhurried, and the husky, low quality of his voice makes something coil tight and hot in your belly that is entirely unrelated to what brought you here in the first place, but still part of the conundrum. For the lack of a more precise answer, you shrug lightly with one shoulder.  
“Nervous?”  
There’s so much that’s missing from the meaning of that word to describe what you’re feeling especially since he’s not privy to half of the things that might make you apprehensive, so you settle for another noncommittal shrug.

“It’s okay, you can be. But really, it’s going to be fine.”  
He reaches out to take your hand and interlace your fingers so that they’re lying halfway between you and him on the bed, and you have to rest your chin on your metal fist now.  
“How do you know?”  
A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.  
“Because I know you. How strong and brave you are. Besides, it was your idea, no backing out now.”  
The tone is teasing and you are sure that Steve isn’t going to hold it against you if you need to do just that, leaving your options open is the whole point of the scheme after all. But it’s the words before that throw you.

“Have I told you how proud of you I am?”  
You remember when he came to you to apologize after the epic blown up over your shooting expedition.  
“You have,” you rasp out, well aware that your voice betrays how you still can’t quite believe him on that.  
“Well, I am. You’ve taken back so much for yourself”, _of yourself_ ,”so much more than I thought… and that makes you strong and brave and extraordinary, and if you need to hear me say it every day for the rest of our lives for you to believe it, I will do that. Do you understand?”  
You choke, wide-eyed, unable to answer in any way other than tightening your fingers around his. He nods and lets his eyes slip closed, turning on his back. Neither of you moves for quite some time. 

The rhythm of his breathing, however, doesn’t return to the deep, regular cadence of sleep and you bite your lip, berating yourself for disturbing his rest with your staring, but you can’t bring yourself to move.  
“Buck?”  
You look up to where his eyes are fluttering open again.  
“Hmm?”  
“You planning on staying there the rest of the night?”  
You feel the unusual hot flash of embarrassment spread on your cheeks and try to untangle your hand from his, message clear that you have outstayed your welcome. Instead of letting go though, he tightens his grip and tugs you closer.  
“Alright, you’re giving me a crick in the neck just thinking about it. Come ‘ere, up. Up.”

Since he refuses to let go of your hand, you have no choice but to follow and crawl up onto the mattress. He drags a spare pillow from behind with his free hand and thumps it into shape a couple of times so you can lie down right next to him. It takes a bit of finagling to get you under the sheets, but immediately after, he settles down again with a couple of satisfied huffs and burrows his face into the pillow.  
“There, that’s better. Now sleep.”  
You rest your head on your own pillow and marvel at this man, who so fearlessly shares his space and his life with you and every once in a while will do something so unexpected and yet natural that you have no idea what to do, but go along with it. You close your eyes and concentrate on the calm, even breaths and the strong, uninterrupted sound of his heartbeat, prepared to let it sooth you through the rest of night.

~*~

You wake up to sunlight and JARVIS’ gentle coaxing with your nose and cheek squished into his chest, your left arm flung over his abdomen and no recollection of how exactly you fell asleep and how long you’ve been out. Strangely enough, the expected panicked reaction and lethal reflexes fail to show up for once, even though you’re still trying to shake the cobwebs of deep and dreamless sleep from your mind. You turn your head slightly to glance up to where he is slowly coming to as well, eyes fluttering open and blinking at the light in the room and it’s not until his thumb slowly starts stroking the nape of your neck that you notice his fingers are buried in your hair, hand cradling your head lightly.  
Which… yeah.  
He exhales slowly, coming fully awake and aware of your respective positions, eyes widening a little, but he doesn’t move away.  
“Okay?”  
His tone is low, sleep-rough and tentative, and you take stock carefully, very surprised that you come away with feeling as calm and rested as you can’t remember feeling since… well, for a very long time. You don’t know what else to do but prop yourself up with your right hand; look down at him with a nod and reply:  
“Okay.”

Some of the wonder you feel must show on your face, because his smile looks like it wants to rival the morning sun. For some reason, you can’t take it for more than a few seconds before you have to turn away and sit at the edge of the bed, scrubbing your hand across your face and over your head. It’s when your eyes fall to the bedside table with the alarm clock, and you realize how close your leaving time is, that the tension immediately settles back into your body. You feel him sit up behind, and his hand slips onto your shoulder, hot, and heavy and grounding through the fabric of your t-shirt.  
“Hey, hey, it’s alright. Let’s go take a shower, get ready, hmm?”  
You turn your head slightly to meet his eyes and nod, before he withdraws his hand and lets you up to shuffle out towards your own bathroom. You hear the water running from his en-suite before you get there, and once you lose yourself under the warm spray of your own shower, you steel your resolve to get through this day according to plan.

~*~

Your car is already waiting in the garage, an ordinary limousine that is nothing like the flashy set of wheels Stark is going to get into out front in just a few minutes. Your exit goes smoothly, as planned, and you watch the bustling Manhattan street life fly by through the tinted windows. Curiously, it’s Steve who fidgets, shifting this way and that until you put a hand on his thigh and press down just enough to keep his leg still. You don’t turn away from the window, but hear him exhale and feel his hand settling over yours in silent acceptance. You are surprisingly calm yourself. The more you think about the impending visit at the memorial, the more you realize it’s actually something you want to do not only as a convenient excuse, but for the sake of it. 

It’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster, no doubt, reconnection with your past in such a tangible way, but it feels a little like closing the door on one part of your life before opening a new one to another. At least you’ll be on your own with Steve, without having to worry about any strangers nearby you’d have to keep it together for. You let yourself drift for the remainder of the drive, lost in your own head, but not really in a bad way for once. Steve thankfully doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with what would have been a very one-sided conversation, even if you are both used to that by now. Instead, he’s subdued and contemplative himself. 

The rows upon rows of somber white grave markers embody their own serene beauty, little flags fluttering in the light breeze. The people make way for the slow rolling sedan easily enough, even though it’s not common for cars to be on the pathways. Some are throwing curious glances its way, but most of the people here today come to visit family of one kind or another and they have their own agendas on their minds. The memorial is tucked into a secluded spot just off York Drive by the Columbarium, and there’s a small cluster of onlookers gathered around the cordoned-off area, but it’s relatively easy to slip in without drawing anyone’s immediate attention. 

The memorial itself is a relatively small building that would comfortably hold no more than a dozen people at any one time. It’s a bit like a half pavilion, open to the front and there’s a single round high window set just under the dome, opposite of the opening. You step over the threshold towards the spot where the light of the midday sun is filtering through the glass to illuminate the centerpiece. It’s Captain America’s shield – carved into white marble which is only kept from being completely ethereal by the slight imperfection of spidery black veins in the stone – that’s made to look like it’s leaning to the wall, ready and waiting for its owner to pick it up and carry it into the fray. You hear Steve draw an audible breath behind you and sense him stopping just inside the building. You understand why… the smooth, bright stone all around you makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a palace of ice, setting a perceived chill in the air despite the sunny and cloudless day. 

You don’t let your steps falter though, walking all the way across the room. The surface around the shield is filled with candles, some burning, some gone out, and cards, bunches of mostly dried flowers. They should look incongruous, all these small specks of color and flame in the pristine serenity, but they don’t. Directly under the ledge of the base and above the row of name plaques the words ‘super pietatem’ are carved into the stone.  
 _Beyond the call_  
You let your eyes travel left and right, over the names of the men you went through purgatory with, fought side by side with and try to recall their faces. You’re surprised that it actually works, mostly, features faded with time passed, distorted through the burnt out patches of your brain. But you remember something distinct and unique about each of them: Dum Dum’s raucous laugh, always accompanied by a shot of whiskey; Falseworth’s crisp and fluid accent; the movement of Morita’s hand when he adjusted that ever present cap on his head; the bright gleam of Gabe’s broad smile; Dernier’s quick and sharp eyes. 

You reach out to the plaque right in the middle, brush your fingers lightly over the raised black letters.  
 _CPT. Steven Grant Rogers_  
There were voices in the aftermath of thawing Steve that called to take it down, since it turned out he wasn’t actually dead, but the debate settled that the memorial was as dignified a way to honor his service as any new one would, so it stayed. Your fingers trail on to the one right next to it, the name you dreaded, but that strangely doesn’t elicit any of the reactions you anticipated.  
 _Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes_  
It feels oddly formal, removed, no sign of Bucky, the man that you can only half-remember being. The man Steve wanted back so badly, he was willing to die trying. 

You reach back with your hand in a silent gesture, unable to turn your eyes away, but there’s no need, because in seconds, he is right _there_ , the comforting heat of his body at your back, and his hand slipping against your cool, gloved fingers without hesitation. His breath fans against your cheek, so immediate and alive, and nothing like the cold hard slab of history right in front of you.  
“We’re not them.”  
The words only register once they’ve passed your lips. You feel his inquiring eyes on your face, but the hushed, awed tone of your voice must have told him enough.  
“No, we aren’t.”

There are parts of Steve Rogers and James Barnes buried here, after all, but you realize with surprise that you feel like they’re resting well, settled safe in the past. You are both different people now that you got dragged in from the cold, literally, but the world has changed a lot as well, and it might be time to stop trying to get back what is unreachable, decades away, and turn a new page to really start building something in the now.  
“Are you alright with that?”  
You finally lift your fingers away from the smooth marble and let your hand fall to your side. Then you turn around to meet his eyes with slow contemplation.  
“Yes.”

He nods in response, and the unspoken ‘Me too’ lifts a weight off your chest you hadn’t even realized was there. It gives your resolve the final boost you needed to decide to enact the last, crucial step of this outing. You stay silent, casting one last look around to give him a moment, while he is clearly still taking in the site. Then you squeeze his hand lightly, very lightly and drop the bombshell.  
“Let’s go, take a walk in the city.”  
You drag him outside towards the idling car before he has time to think and answer with more than a spluttered ‘What?!” Ignoring him, you rap your knuckles sharply against the driver’s side window.

You thought a lot about how to deal with the driver as one of the few variables that you can reliably anticipate but not control. In the end, you decided to wing it, because spontaneity is likely to work the same way on the staff as it is on Steve. Still, you don’t know why you are surprised that the window slides down to reveal Barton, decked out complete with a silly chauffeur’s cap and a shit-eating grin. It does make things easier though, since Barton won’t require an explanation from you for going off script.  
“We’re going to get some air, meet us at Jefferson and 4th in a couple of hours.”  
Barton gives you a half-assed salute in response.  
“You’re the boss.”

Thankfully, he lets the windows roll up before Steve can get a good look inside and make him. You needn’t really have worried though, because Steve is clearly so thrown by the unexpected turn of events that it doesn’t even occur to him to do anything but gape open-mouthed at the leaving car with and incredulous expression. The sight almost makes you chuckle, but you hold off, not wanting to risk the sound throwing his brain into gear, combat ready and seething. The imperative is to keep him off balance just a little while longer. So you tug at his hand to get him to move with you, and the two of you slip out back through a copse of trees and mix with the regular visitors unnoticed. 

You draw the hood of your sweatshirt up over your head and slide on the pair of sunglasses you’d had tucked into your collar. The form-fitting ‘hipster jeans’ – as Natalia calls them – and the elegant, but solid, leather boots complete the look of a millennial twenty-something you want to present to the public. There was some debate on whether you should wear the matching black leather glove to the one covering your left hand or not, but you don’t like gloves on your right and it was ultimately decided that there would be enough veterans around that day similarly concealing injuries that it shouldn’t raise eyebrows even on the off chance that someone spotted you and got a good enough look to wonder. 

Steve went with the tried and true combination of khakis, t-shirt, dark blue windbreaker and ball cap. It’s perfectly adequate for the sunny day with the crisp chill of spring still lingering in the air. It’s so simple in fact, it can hardly be labeled a disguise, but that’s really why it’s so effective in the first place. People tend to be able to recall symbols much better than faces, so when he’s not wearing the shield on his back, the star-spangled suit, they hardly ever recognize him, and you suspect he likes it that way. By the time you are halfway across the river on Arlington Memorial Bridge, Steve finally seems to get his wits about him again. You count yourself lucky you’ve managed to string him along for twenty minutes already. 

It’s probably the fact that there are not many people in the immediate vicinity that makes him tug you to a stop and hiss:  
“Bucky, what are you doing?!”  
It’s the first time you don’t feel the need to flinch at the name, whether it’s due to the closure you got at the memorial just minutes ago, or the fact that you are about to take it back anyway with what comes next. Either way, the feeling gives you the confidence to carefully maneuver around the real reason.  
“I’ve been cooped up in the tower for months, Steve. And the accommodations are spectacular, and a lot of that time was necessary, I get that… but I haven’t taken a single walk out in the open for at least seventy years. And for all we know, I’ve been to places all over the world, but I haven’t even stepped a foot outside of New York without being out of my mind, or fighting and running for my life or both. Is it so strange that now we’re here, I want to take a stroll down the National Mall?”

Again, it’s meant as a distraction, but it’s also the truth and Steve looks as if it hits him like a punch in the gut. He’s by no means insensitive about your ordeal, on the contrary, but sometimes even he doesn’t fathom the scope of the situation until it hits him on the nose.  
“Bucky…I…”  
You shake your head firmly.  
“Don’t… just… walk with me?”  
He looks at your outstretched hand and after a moment’s hesitation takes it and you continue on towards where the Lincoln Memorial is sitting squat atop the river bend. You feel a little strange out in the open, holding hands like Steve is a girl you’d want to take dancing, but for all of your bravado, there is still a lot of open space and unfamiliar people around, and you need the touch to ground you and keep you from falling into a cold, disconnected state. Besides, nobody even gives the pair of you a second glance.

You keep your pace slow and random, trying not to let on that you have a specific destination in mind, and it helps to distract you by providing some context on the history of the sites that you still haven’t caught up on. You note with a certain wistfulness just how many different war memorials lie on the way towards the Capitol, many families, couples and sometimes lone veterans flocking around them, looking for names, leaving flowers. You both avoid getting up close to any of them by unspoken agreement. Steve switches to personal anecdotes rather than history once you pass by the WWII Memorial, with the gathering of frail, decorated veterans walking with canes or sitting in wheelchairs just too strange to contemplate. He’s regaling you with the story of how he met Sam more or less running a very skewed race of the rabbit and the turtle around the reflecting pool when you round the Washington Monument even though you’ve certainly heard the unembellished version before. You can feel the tension settling in your muscles more and more though, the closer you get to where you’re actually going, and while Steve must pick up on it, he thankfully doesn’t comment, probably assuming it’s about the unfamiliar exposure to the city bustling with people. 

Finally though, when you are about to amble past the Air and Space Museum complete with large banners plastered with his face out front, you draw to a halt and take off the sunglasses, tucking them back into the collar of your hoodie, before looking at the entrance, where people are steadily streaming in and out. Steve trails off mid-sentence to follow your eyes and then snaps his head back to you with an inquisitive expression. This moment is actually the part of the plan where you need to tread the most lightly, because, more than anything else, it is contingent on Steve going along with it without question even though he obviously knows now that something more than just a simple outing is going on. You’ve spent hours and hours thinking about how to approach this turning point, but there is really only one way.  
“Do you trust me?”

You let the sentence hang in the air between the two of you, forcing yourself to let the moment stretch out into silence, to wait for him to come to a conclusion in his own time. Deep down you know the answer of course, wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a fact, but you need to hear it, need both of you to hear it to be able to take that last crucial step forward. Steve looks like he wants to ask a million questions, but he must be able to read your face well enough to drop it. In the end, he settles for a nod and a single: “Yes.”  
You feel part of the built-up tension leave your body and take a deep breath.  
“Follow my lead.”

You don’t wait for him to respond before turning around abruptly and making for the entrance of the museum. Once inside, you keep tracking him from the edge of your vision, but otherwise make no move to drift any closer or even particularly make the impression that you’re here together. Your hood isn’t drawn all the way down into your face because that would be more suspicious than not, but you keep your head carefully angled to avoid the cameras, half out of instinctual habit, half out of caution. You don’t want to be interrupted by unexpected company before you’re ready to put the last bit of the plan into action and there’s no way to know who or what is tapped into the digital minders of humanity at any given moment. You are sure that Barton has probably run some interference with Stark or there would probably have been a helicopter circling over your heads forty minutes ago, but the overbearing billionaire is hardly the only person keeping an eye out for the Winter Soldier and Captain America. Steve thankfully picks up on your tactic and subtly uses the shield of his cap and the bulk of his back to prevent any of the cameras and most of the museum's other patrons from getting a good look at his face. 

When you pass the dramatic mural right at the entrance of the Captain America exhibition, you tune out the obnoxious voice-over immediately. Steve doesn’t know you’ve been here before, but you actually spent hours upon hours, immediately after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., suddenly adrift in a world without ice, and pain and order. When you were looking for a reason, any justification for the fact that you failed to eliminate a target, and instead chose to drop into the river and drag his unconscious body to the bank, staying those long moments until he drew breath after sluggish breath before your secondary directives kicked in full force and you had to leave. You went first, because it seemed like the most easily accessible collection of information, of history, confirmation of your identity. 

You’ve come a long way since then, but you still know the layout of the whole exhibition down to the last detail, all the routes, exits, entrances, which exhibits people flock to, where they pass by with barely a glance. That makes it the perfect place to execute your maneuver. But when you move silently among the crowd that is copious, but thankfully not too packed, it feels like one last test. Now that you are so close to completing the final step, declaring yourself to the world, you wonder whether you chose this elaborate scheme not because the thought of facing the public outright was so inconceivable, but because of all things that could have gone wrong today and derailed the whole plan. Things that were more likely to happen than you arriving here, now, yet you still could have told yourself that you’d tried.

You could walk past, even now, just leave and let none of these people here be the wiser, and for a moment, when the crowd surges and jostles you, the dark of the room, and the heat of unfamiliar people so close almost too much, you are sorely tempted. You think back on the journey that’s brought you here though, not only today, but all those months, the hard-fought struggle to reclaim your life and yourself as a person with wants and desires, a purpose…  
 _Steve. Keeping Steve safe._  
…so, now you want to see it through. 

So you go with the flow, Steve sticking closer now, so you don’t get separated by the throng of people, until you draw up short across from the display that shows some of the old propaganda newsreels. Battle footage of course, but also those few, very precious moments, captured on a whim without being staged, of them in their downtime, enjoying each other’s company without having to think about the whole continent going up in flames around you for a minute. It’s the thing that sparked the first memory you’ve ever consciously recovered, something completely ordinary and inconsequential, but the final confirmation that there was something beneath that cold hard indifference to the human condition and the paper-thin image of a man seventy years dead, wearing your face. It’s probably fitting that it should be instrumental to you finally tying the two together and shedding both. 

You turn to Steve to press him against the wall with a firm hand on his stomach.  
“Stay here. Don’t come in until I give you the signal.”  
He opens his mouth like he wants to argue for a moment, but you pin him with a look, willing him to understand how important it is for him to keep his distance until you’re ready. When he nods, you lift your hand slowly and pray in your head that your brain will stay with you on this for the next ten minutes, before you turn and walk over to the display where the recording is flickering brightly in the subdued, indirect light of the exhibition rooms. You linger a little until the family in front of you moves on and leaves an opening for you to plant yourself squarely right in front of the monitor, pretending to be lost in the images playing on the screen even though you can predict which frame will come on when down to the second by just glancing at it once in passing. 

Now you’re in position, so close to the monitor that any of the other patrons will have difficulty viewing what’s on around your now considerable bulk, and from here on out, it’s just a waiting game. And really, it doesn’t take long for some discontent grumbling to start up behind your back, which you ignore, until a young guy comes up on your right, tapping you on the shoulder to get your attention.  
“Hey, you mind stepping aside, so other people can have a look too? You must have seen it all a couple of times now.”  
It’s as polite and reasonable as a teenaged high school student on a holiday trip can manage, but you are well aware that your lack of reaction or moving aside is likely to the guy worked up in very little time. 

“Hello, can you hear me? I’m talking to you.”  
His voice gets slightly louder, and you notice that people are starting to drift closer, stopped in their tracks by the innate human curiosity, trying to figure out what the fuss is about. You stay still and unresponsive though, ignoring the subtle crawling feeling of more and more eyes swiveling in your direction, especially the burning sensation between your shoulder blades that is undoubtedly Steve’s stormy gaze.  
“Come on, buddy, I get that you’re a fan, but you’re not alone in here, ok?”  
The tone is definitely exasperated now, and finally the guy gets bold enough to put his hand on your shoulder, to try and get you to step away. You squash the reflex to plant your feet like concrete and break the young man’s wrist, turning with the movement instead, while you twist your head slightly, so the hood falls down on your shoulders. 

You keep your hands at your sides and your expression carefully neutral and wait for the penny to drop. And you are sure it will. It’s one thing to be passed over outside when people see two young men they do not expect to be Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes strolling past the Smithsonian. It’s another thing when the sepia toned flickers of yourself laughing and smacking Captain America in the chest with the back of your hand light up your features. You can discern the exact moments when the guy’s face goes from a puzzled frown, to eyes rapidly flickering back and forth between your face and the screen, to wide-eyed shock.  
“Holy shit.”  
He stumbles back a couple steps, banging into a friend standing beside him, who lets out a startled ‘hey, watch it.’ until he looks up too and his jaw drops.  
“What the actual f…”

You don’t pay any more attention to them, instead fixing your gaze on Steve, noting that there are already the bright lights of recording cellphone cameras turned your way. When your eyes meet over the many faces in the crowd, it only takes a minute movement of your head to get Steve to shoot away from his perch against the opposite wall and move towards you through the ever growing cluster of people. At first there is irritated chatter, but then people begin to realize who might be pushing past them and the crowd spits him out to come to halt in the small space next to you while you don’t take your eyes off of him. With a subtle shift of your eyebrows you get him to whip off the cap and scrub over his head self-consciously, leveling you with an incredulous glare, but clearly giving you the reins to bring this show to a close with a grand finale, while the whispers are starting to buzz and spread, and you see more and more fingers pointed out of the corner of your eye. 

You take his biceps in a firm, steadying grip, holding his gaze to keep this moment between the two of you for just a couple of heartbeats, before you face the world with the words you chose and discarded in your head so many times until you realized that there was no right or wrong way to say this, just the simplest, most bare-boned truth of what you need people to know. You turn towards the chattering crowd and feel his hand settle at the small of your back, hot, and heavy, and safe. Then you take a deep breath, and your throat closes up for one single, terrifying second before the words just flow out, clear, and bold and loud.  
“My name is James Buchanan Barnes. And I will _always_ be at his side. Til’ the end of the line.”  
You hear his breath hitch next to you and feel his arm tremble under your fingers, but make a point to cast a slow look around. Not for the people right here, mostly, but those with the long reach, and the short leashes, who are going see this and _know_ what they’ll be facing when they decide to go after him. 

Utter silence settles over everything for just a moment. Once you are satisfied that you got the message out, you take that as your cue to leave, before everyone recovers from their shock and starts clamoring for more answers. The crowd parts easily for you, and you lead Steve, who seems to be quite dazed himself, out towards one of the lesser frequented side exits. You leave quickly and efficiently, and well ahead of the spreading excitement. True to the agreement, your car is idling at the curb just a few spaces down, and it’s easy to slip in the back and vanish behind the privacy of the tinted windows without anyone spotting you. 

You’ve barely settled into the cushy leather seats, adrenaline and exhilaration over what you just did rushing through you. Steve doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth for what will undoubtedly be shaping up to a major tongue-lashing, before the partition to the driver’s cabin slides down and Barton is turning around, tucking his elbows against the front seats with an unholy glee in his eyes.  
“Bucky, my man, that was brilliant! Completely underhanded, a little bit over the top and utterly brilliant. Worth every fucking second in this monkey suit, I tell you!” he waves a tablet enthusiastically through the air. “You should really see how it’s blowing up on Twitter right now. I predict that #BuckyLives is going to break the internet by the end of today. My only regret is that I won’t be able to see Stark’s face when he watches all those tweets and vines and YouTube videos in a second. But don’t worry, I made Nat promise to take pictures.”

Despite the fact that you only understood about half of what he just said – even though you did count on social media to spread the word and fast without any actual news outlets present – you can’t help the broad grin that stretches your lips into a shape that feels unfamiliar but good, and which he returns with great enthusiasm.  
“Shut up and drive.”  
Barton tips his hat and turns back to the wheel with a ‘You got it.’ thrown over his shoulder as the partition slides back up. This is apparently Steve’s cue to jump in, arriving completely at the wrong conclusion at first, as it happens.

“Did _Clint_ put you up to this?”  
You shake your head and avert your eyes, biting your lip slightly, not really as bashful as you like to pretend right now.  
“No, I… he just told me that if I couldn’t make it work like Stark wanted me to, I had to come up with my own way.”  
“Why didn’t you say something?”  
You let your eyes flit up again, but fix them on the moving scenery over his right shoulder.  
“I didn’t want you… I wanted…” _to nurse a hope that might be futile. An out. To see if it was something I could make work, just for myself._

 

There are so many different answers that are right and true, but you can’t bring yourself to voice any of them. Finally meeting his eyes, however, shows you that he knows all of them, and he understands. Gone is the is the shock and the irritation, instead, his expression is alight with speechless wonder, as if he can’t quite believe what you’ve accomplished, even though he was an integral part of it himself. And in this moment, something slips into place that hasn’t seemed to fit right for quite some time, like the piece of a puzzle you’ve been trying to press into place the wrong way around. The incessant warmth settling in your belly even now, the restful, dreamless sleep in his bed, with his heart beating steadily under your ear, the weird feeling on the bridge, like he was a girl you’d have taken dancing.

It’s because… Steve is the one you’d want to be dancing with. Life and fate have whittled away all your morals, and social conventions, and trust and fear – and even though you’ve worked to get some of it back, the good and the bad, piece by piece, there are still only the bare bones of a person and one deep, abiding connection that managed to break through every single wall against all odds.  
Apparently, Steve is the center of your world in more ways than one. In every way that counts.  
The moment stretches on, and Steve starts to look slightly unsettled, as if he’s trying to follow your thoughts, but isn’t quite sure where they’re leading. You feel strangely light right now, as if the past and the present have lost their hold over you considering the victory you just won over yourself in front of the world today. It’s most likely that feeling, and the left over adrenaline that keeps you from finding arguments as to why acting on this epiphany might be a very bad idea. 

So you slide your hand up his arm and put it at the nape of his neck, drawing him closer, slowly and delicately, giving him ample time to twist out of your grasp. He doesn’t.  
When your lips touch, soft and barely moving against each other, you feel your body trembling with the sensation. A kind of human connection you can barely remember, and what you have pales to grainy black and white compared to the electric frisson that runs between the both of you now. You break apart after a few moments, noses still almost touching, and you meet his eyes, the abject fear rising that, with this one selfish notion, you’ve shattered everything that took so long to build in seconds. That fear doesn’t get the chance to spread though, because with a stuttering breath, he dives back in, fingers splaying on your cheek, seemingly determined to show you that he learned a thing or two about kissing in all those years.  
It’s single-handedly the best thing you can remember feeling in your life. 

~*~ Epilogue ~*~

It takes a while to register with your current preoccupation, but there’s a panel that’s slid down in one of the doors, to reveal a Starkphone that apparently refuses to quit ringing until somebody takes the call, no matter how viciously you glare at it. And since it’s your side of the car, that dubious honor falls to you. You finally drag yourself away from the exploration of Steve’s lips for long enough to fumble around until you have the phone in hand. The casing creaks in the careless grip of your metal fingers, but it doesn’t crack, much to your dismay. You even manage to press the right button to connect the call and answer with an impatient “What?”, the fingers of your right hand buried in Steve’s hair while he unashamedly continues to slide his lips down your jaw now that your mouth is otherwise occupied. It's doing exactly nothing to calm your breath or slow your racing heart. Stark sounds absolutely unruffled by the terse reception and instead barges right in. 

“What did I say about no funny business?”  
You fumble with the phone, almost dropping it in the urgency to check whether there’s a video option somewhere you missed or hit by accident, before you remember what Stark is talking about and hiss at Steve when he chuckles into your throat.  
“I’m not letting you ground me.”  
“Yes, I realize that with your super assassin skills of stealth, that one’s probably a moot point. Doesn’t change the fact that I have the Mongolian Hordes of the National Press trying to break down my doors right now after you pulled your… what is commonly referred to as a publicity stunt. I have to admit I did not see that one coming. Didn’t think you had it in you, quite frankly.”  
For the first time, you hear the grudging respect underneath his natural state of constant annoyance and you can’t help the giddy feeling settling in your chest. Stark doesn’t dole it out for being outspent or outgunned, but he does it for being outsmarted. 

“Doesn’t change the fact that you just about covered the tiniest increments of the big questions, and I have no idea what to tell them now.”  
Steve draws back at that, undoubtedly having listened in to the conversation. He hovers in front of you with kind eyes and a serious expression, obviously waiting for you to decide. You play with the short hair at the nape of his neck, while you ponder the question and revel in the newfound intimacy. A radical idea enters your head as you mull it over. You are tired of running and hiding yourself, and now that you are part of the Avengers for the better or worse, you have everyone whose approval matters to you in any way right around you. They all have history, questionable spots in their past, tough calls, amends to make. This is your rightful place, and you’ll be damned if you let anyone that doesn’t have any significance in your life judge what happened to you. So…

“Tell them everything.”  
“What?!”  
“Take the file, dump it on the Internet, unredact the reports, I don’t care, they can read all about it.”  
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”  
Steve looks at you with wide eyes and mouths ‘Are you sure?’. You nod slowly, not breaking contact even for a second before you answer Stark.  
“I know who I am now, with everything past and present taken into account. And if they can’t deal with that? Well, tough.”  
The complete confidence in your voice obviously reaches Steve, but it also seems to carry over through the line to Stark, who sighs dramatically and then continues muttering:  
“One of these days, I swear… Alright, have it your way. I’ll go face the vultures and let you get back to… wait a second, were you sucking face when you took the call? You totally were, weren’t you, oh God, that’s something I’ll never be able to unhear, I can’t even… I need a drink, no, give me that bottle…”

It’s Steve who takes the phone right then and with a firm ‘Good _bye_ , Tony’ disconnects the call and drops it carelessly into the footwell. You immediately tug him closer again, intend on going back to where you left off after being so rudely interrupted, but he stops short a couple of inches away from your face.  
“You… are amazing.”  
And for the first time since you can remember, nothing feels fake about the delighted smirk that draws to your lips.  
“I know.”  
He shakes his head lightly at your sass and then closes the remaining distance between the two of you. You let the flood emotion wash away all the lingering tension and insecurity you’d started the day with, leaving behind excitement for the future, gratitude and a little spark of happiness. 

 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you for sticking with this until the end and I'd just like to let you know that I appreciate all the comments, kudos, bookmarks and hits this story has gotten and I'm always grateful if you leave feedback, constructive or squealing, however you like and that I've been glad to hear how this entertained and moved people. (Also, there might, possibly, if I can get my shit together actually be somewhat of a series in this. But you didn't hear that from me. PSHT!)


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